The Tympans of Temples Held
by That-Hoopy-Frood
Summary: December 31st, 1958: The city at the bottom of the sea prepares to celebrate the New Year. November 3rd: Yi Suchong discovers a door to another world. September 12th: Frank Fontaine is killed by Ryan Security. August 15th: Elizabeth arrives in Rapture on an errand of retribution, to collect a debt, to pay down one last account. (Set before Bioshock Infinite: Burial at Sea)
1. I

_"We all make choices. But in the end, our choices make us."_

 _– Andrew Ryan_

* * *

 _From that Sea of Time,_

 _Spray, blown by the wind—a double winrow-drift of weeds and shells;_

 _O little shells, so curious-convolute! so limpid-cold and voiceless!_

 _Yet will you not, to the tympans of temples held,_

 _Murmurs and echoes still bring up—Eternity's music, faint and far,_

 _Wafted inland, sent from Atlantica's rim—strains for the Soul of the Prairies,_

 _Whisper'd reverberations—chords for the ear of the West, joyously sounding_

 _Your tidings old, yet ever new and untranslatable;_

 _Infinitessimals out of my life, and many a life,_

 _(For not my life and years alone I give—all, all I give;)_

 _These thoughts and Songs—waifs from the deep_

 _– Walt Whitman_

* * *

Beneath The Atlantic Ocean

1958

* * *

August 15th, 1958

Security Chief Sullivan was very drunk. But he had seen a leadhead splicer gun down a good friend of his that afternoon, so he wanted to get drunker. He stumbled into the Silver Fin restaurant on the upper pavilion of the department store and ordered a beer. And when he finished his first beer, he ordered another. Patrons kept stealing glances, and Morris Lauderman, the restaurateur, looked like he wanted to say something in protest. But Sullivan was Ryan's man, and anyone with half a brain rattling in their skulls knew better than to cross Andrew Ryan. So when Sullivan opened his third bottle of Old Harbinger in the lobby of the Silver Fin, no one said boo to him.

The evening hours grew long and thin. The restaurant was nearly empty by the time Sullivan put his sixth Old Harbinger on his tab. He sat alone at the bar, a sour Morris Lauderman wiping glasses behind the counter. Somewhere in the department store, a voice urged shoppers to make their final purchases. Lauderman dimmed the lights of the restaurant; the bioluminescent plants behind the windows began to glow pearly green and purple.

"Closing soon, Sullivan," Morris mumbled, half meaning it.

"Fuck off."

"Suit yourself. Securis will close automatically on your way out. Don't hang around."

Lauderman emptied the cash register and went upstairs, muttering something less than flattering about Ryan's security detail. Sullivan ignored him.

After his seventh bottle, the security chief struggled to string a coherent thought together. So when the woman in the blue dress appeared seemingly out of thin air, right in the middle of the restaurant, it took Sullivan several foggy moments to realize that something was wrong.

"Hey! Hey you!" His words sounded thick and slurred. The woman froze. For a second, she looked startled. Then her face hardened, and she crossed her arms defiantly.

"What?"

Sullivan struggled to find something reasonably intelligible to say. He pointed at the woman with his empty bottle. "You… you just appeared out of the air…"

The woman arched an elegant eyebrow. "Did I?"

"Don't… no, don't deny it, lady. You weren't there a second ago."

The woman took a step forward. She looked towards Sullivan's belt, at the gun holster strapped to his right hip. She noted the man's crumpled white shirt, untucked tie, a few errant strands of hair combed over a bald patch on the top of his head. There was a security badge pinned to his breast pocket.

"You're drunk, chief," the woman said calmly, "I didn't appear––"

"You fucking did!"

"Think about it. Do people go around appearing out of thin air? Is that something people are liable to do?"

Sullivan paused. He blinked myopically at her. His gray eyes were bloodshot and watery. The smell of cheap alcohol peeled off him in waves. Even with his drunken sneer, the woman didn't think Sullivan looked aggressive, just incredibly sad.

"You ain't," Sullivan muttered, "ain't one of them Houdinis, blinking in and out… Christ, you are, ain't you?"

The woman didn't know what he was talking about. She stayed quiet, observant. She watched Sullivan's hands, continually glanced towards the pistol hanging at his belt.

"Freaks, the whole bunch of you." Sullivan spat at the woman's feet. She didn't flinch. "Killed my men… you fucking psychopaths. You one of Fontaine's, huh? You one of his? All those good guys, down at Port Neptune, at the fisheries. Christ…"

"Go home. You're drunk. You're upset. You need to sleep this off."

Sullivan didn't seem to hear her. He staggered out of the Silver Fin and into the atrium. The woman followed.

The restaurant was on a balcony overlooking a boulevard of boutiques and showrooms. Neon lights sparkled against the crystal staircases. Advertisements plastered the walls, grinning back at the shoppers from the reflective surfaces of the windows and the floors. Sullivan stared aimlessly at several of the posters. One of them advertised casinos and strip clubs in a place called Fort Frolic. Another featured a caricature with a finger pressed conspiratorially to its lips. The words Peeping Tom Plasmid were scrawled above its greasy head.

"It's hangings now," said Sullivan miserably, "down in Apollo Square… is this what Rapture's come to? I ain't making the rules down here, no. No. I just enforce them. Got to keep things in order… got to impose the laws in a place that ain't got any…"

Sullivan stumbled down the stairs to the show floor, bracing himself against the curve of the wall. The woman watched him go. She didn't move until Sullivan had disappeared from sight.

"Rapture…"

The woman took a deep breath. The air tasted stale. Everything smelled damp and briny. Hidden speakers played tinny music on repeat. The atrium looked garish with its blinking lights and rotating display cases. The walls and floors were all translucent crystal; everywhere the woman looked, a tired face stared back at her, her gaze half a world and half a lifetime away.

An elevator on the far side of the atrium led to showrooms for home appliances and bathyspheres and plasmids, and many more things the woman didn't recognize. Above the elevator was another sign, larger than the rest, the words paraded in big, block letters:

FONTAINE'S DEPARTMENT STORE

… _a face… a man. A name within a name… the long game, and I'm gonna make the kinda scratch that'll have Ryan look like he's runnin' a paper route…_

The woman felt her insides grow cold. She rubbed the thimble that had replaced her right pinky finger. It was a nervous habit, and something about the department store made the woman feel distinctly ill at ease. The Doors were veiled. Many of the Tears had been sealed up behind rivets and aluminum. It was hard to see through the walls dividing one world from another, to peer into the kaleidoscope of space and time fractured inside her head.

Elizabeth suddenly felt very small, and very alone.

A few men and women milled around the atrium. They ignored her, walking fast and clutching their shopping bags close to their chests.

"Bicycle clip hats and saddle shoes." Elizabeth allowed herself a tiny smile. "Late 1950s…"

She had jumped forward in time. She could feel it. Stepping through the Tear had been like lurching over a hill, her stomach rising up into her throat, the adjacent years stretching her mind like elastic while the rest of her body dragged behind. She had felt a pressure change in the air, a rush of cold wind buffeting her body. It wasn't her own time anymore.

Elizabeth chuckled at the thought.

She didn't _have_ a time. She didn't belong anywhere, and she belonged everywhere. She could see all the Doors, and what was behind all the Doors: the clip hats and the saddle shoes, the neon branding, a shining city at the bottom of the sea…

Elizabeth stopped rubbing the thimble. She looked up, towards the skylight in the ceiling, and watched a school of silvery fish undulate through the murk. Behind the glow of the city lights and the iridescent fauna, the blackness went on and on, like a universe without stars. Or a million, million lighthouses that had all gone dark.

"He's here," she said aloud.

"So it would seem." A British woman appeared at Elizabeth's side. If Elizabeth was surprised, she didn't show it. "When he runs, he runs fast and runs far, doesn't he?"

"He can't run anymore." Elizabeth looked around the atrium. Through the huge windows, a patchwork of lights glowed against the gloom: apartment complexes and department stores and skyscrapers, reaching for the ocean surface instead of the clouds. "There's nowhere else to go."

"You may be more right than you know." A British man, with the same aquiline, freckled face and red hair as the British woman, faced Elizabeth from across the balcony. "Although there remains the matter of actually _finding_ him."

"I'll find him."

"How?" They asked in unison.

Elizabeth turned to Rosalind Lutece. "I'm resourceful."

"We don't doubt that. But the devils in the details. You know Comstock is in the city, but where in the city is another matter entirely."

"I know he's in this city," Elizabeth argued, "and unless he has another Lutece device––"

"He does not."

"Then he can never leave this place."

"Rapture." Robert Lutece gave Elizabeth an indulgent tilt of his head. "The city at the bottom of the ocean."

"The perfect hiding place," Rosalind Lutece added.

"They say the perfect prison is one with the illusion of freedom."

"They say the perfect trap is one with many doors."

"Ensnaring everyone."

"Predator, and prey."

"Bird."

"And cage."

"I know what I'm doing!" snapped Elizabeth. She hurried up the stairs, towards the elevators. The Luteces did not follow her. When the door of the elevator slid shut and the car began to rise towards the upper floors, Elizabeth turned around, and the Luteces were still standing behind her. "I've done this before, remember? Countless Comstocks, across countless worlds. What makes this place any different from the dozens, no, hundreds of others?"

Rosalind and Robert Lutece glanced at each other. They didn't speak for what seemed like a very long time. The elevator stopped on the highest floor of the department store.

"This is the last," said one Lutece.

"The final iteration," said the other.

Elizabeth grew quiet. She went through the Securis door and emerged into a small plaza, across from a gentlemen's store called Cupid's Arrow. She could see herself reflected in the display cases, haloed in the pink neon. She looked older, wearier. Sadder. Her dark hair had grown long. The blue eyes that gazed back at her were somewhere very far away.

"What comes next?" Elizabeth asked quietly, not expecting an answer. "If Comstock is erased from every version of history, then what becomes the point of me? What do I do when all of this is finished…"

Elizabeth trailed off into silence. The Luteces were gone.

The store crowds began to dwindle. Shop owners pulled metal grates across their doors. Somewhere in the plaza, twelve toles of a clock signaled midnight. Elizabeth was suddenly aware of how incongruous she looked, standing alone in the dark department store in attire that hadn't been in fashion for the last 40 years. Lady Comstock's velvet skirt had been mended so many times that very little remained of the original material. The jacket and corset had grown worn and faded. Elizabeth looked up at the boutique posters of women in their white frocks and buttoned collars, and then she looked towards Cupid's Arrow, where several dresses hung in the display case.

"Once more unto the breach," Elizabeth murmured. She stepped into the shop.


	2. II

August 16th, 1958

 _Audio Transcript – 'Rest'_

 _[So, he's found his way back to Rapture. When Songbird destroyed the Siphon, I brought us here. For me, it was a long time ago. For Rapture, it hasn't happened yet. We keep coming back to these same places. The great serpent eats its own tail and destruction begets creation, I suppose, going around and around in circles. Perhaps, just as energy can neither be created nor destroyed, so too does time and destiny have a tendency of recurring, never created anew, but simply existent in a new form. The Luteces tell me that here is where I will find the final iteration of Comstock, and I desperately want to believe them. I want to rest. It's time to break the circle.]_

Elizabeth, dressed in a black skirt and button-down shirt, her brooch pinned to a red necktie, wandered through the empty department store. Beyond the windows, the ocean was impossibly black. Shadows flickered along the walls as luminescent fish flashed through the murk. Dawn seemed a long way away –– not that anyone in Rapture would ever see the sunlight. It was a small wonder, Elizabeth thought, that the whole city hadn't gone completely insane.

As she moved past the haberdashery and the jewelry store, the security cameras and turrets became more numerous. Elizabeth kept to the corridor peripheries, staying just outside the searchlights of the automated security. Elizabeth had considered opening a new Tear to another part of Rapture, away from Fontaine's Department Store –– simply materialize through spacetime like the Luteces. But she couldn't risk entering a world without Comstock. There was a debt to be repaid, and Elizabeth was prepared to take the long way around to collect.

Unlike the rest of the department store, the Rapture Metro station in the pavilion was not completely deserted. Elizabeth froze in the entryway. Two women –– at least, Elizabeth assumed they were women –– milled around one of the anchored bathyspheres. They hammered on the hull of the spherical submersible with basin wrenches and pipes. Their appearances were grotesque. Black hair fell out in matted clumps. Their eyes glowed yellow, and their faces were pockmarked with blisters. The skin on their knuckles had been scraped clean, exposing the necrotic flesh and sinew underneath. They wore ragged scraps of clothing held together by clothespins. In some places, Elizabeth noted queasily, the pins went straight through their skirts and were buried in their legs, right down to the bone.

 _… there have been side effects: blindness, insanity, death…_

Elizabeth took a step backwards, towards a ventilation duct set into the wall. She heard the man's breath in her ear before she saw him, standing right behind her…

"Cat lick your heart," he rasped.

Elizabeth screamed.

The misshapen lump of his face leered, pulsing with weeping sores. He gnashed his black and broken teeth. Elizabeth staggered towards the center of the pavilion. The two women looked up from the bathysphere, and their pupils narrowed to slits.

"Painted whore!" they shrieked. Their lips split and blood dripped down their chins.

Elizabeth searched for a weapon, but the department store floor was spotless. The displays were locked behind thick panes of glass. As Elizabeth skirted the edges of the pavilion, the disfigured creatures barred down on her, hefting their wrenches and gutting knives and icepicks. Elizabeth looked back towards the department store complex. When the man circled around her to join his companions, Elizabeth bolted for the Prêt-à-Porter boutique.

"Pretend you're not interested!" the creatures snarled. "They like that!"

As Elizabeth drew closer to the shop, she saw the security turret's spotlight darken from green to red. The stocky machine swiveled, aiming its double-barreled gun straight at Elizabeth. She dove behind a rack of clothing, and the turret fired several rounds into the assailants, daubing the far wall in scarlet. The man died instantly, a bullet burying into his exposed brain cavity. Several more sliced through the women's throats. They fell to their knees, grasping at their necks, gurgling in agony as blood pooled on the glossy hardwood floors.

"What the fuck…"

Elizabeth struggled out from under the clothes. Behind the service desk, a bald man in a turtleneck looked around in horror. He held a toolbox in one hand and his gun in the other. He wasn't pointing his pistol at Elizabeth; instead, he had it trained at the three corpses on his floor, as though he was afraid they would lurch to their feet and stagger towards him. When the man turned to Elizabeth, his expression was creased with concern.

"Christ, lady, you okay?"

Elizabeth nodded, ashen-faced. "I am now."

"Shit, it's a good thing I was in early to repair the turrets. Fontaine, he calls me down, and he says to me, he says, 'Herschel,' he says, 'you gotta get the security devices seen to otherwise them splicers are gonna tear the place a new asshole.'"

"Splicers…" Elizabeth stared at the corpses. Their bodies looked as though they had been stapled together by someone with only a diminutive understanding of human physiology. Their skin was shingled and enflamed. Even riddled with bullets, the two women twitched. They hardly seemed like people anymore.

"Too much gene splicing, that is. They're a fucking menace, and Ryan… Ryan, that son of a bitch, he thought the whole ADAM fiasco was just going bounce off him. Well, he ain't made of rubber. If he don't start doing something soon…"

 _… ADAM acts like benign cancer, destroying native cells and replacing them with unstable stem versions… causes the cosmetic and mental damage… you need more and more ADAM just to keep back the tide…_

"I have to go…" Elizabeth brushed off her dress. She tried to keep her hands from shaking.

"Hey, there may be more of those bastards running bat-shit crazy out there. You don't want to go out alone."

"I appreciate your help, Herschel. It was serendipitous, and it likely saved my life, but I am needed elsewhere."

"Oh, okay," Herschel Weiss nodded, "I get it. Night staff, are you? Figured you'd bum a ciggy on your break? Look, lady, you really ought to be careful around here at night."

Elizabeth nodded. "I will be certain to bear that in mind. Good morning."

"Good morning, miss. Be careful, yeah?"

Elizabeth left Prêt-à-Porter. When she reentered the pavilion, faint rays of light rippled down from the surface. The ocean glowed a deep green. In the department store, Elizabeth heard the sounds of metal grates being pulled back and doors unlocked, prerecorded advertisements playing over the intercoms. Rapture was waking up.

Elizabeth realized she had a problem during the shift change, when the night staff went home for the day and the first shoppers drifted through the pavilion. People began to line up for the bathyspheres, and every single person held a ticket stub in their hand. Those without tickets were turned away or forced to fork over several crumbled dollar bills, each one with a dark, angular man with intense eyes glaring back at them from the center fold. Elizabeth patted at the pockets of her new shirt and skirt; while Carol Lynn had been complacent enough to leave her purchases laying around Cupid's Arrow, her carelessness hadn't extended to leaving her purse in her pocket. More was the pity, thought Elizabeth.

She walked up to the last person standing in line: a young woman with premature age lines marring the corners of her mouth. A nametag on her breast pocket identified her as Samantha Kemp, an employee of the Old Man Winter test drive.

 _… just a long, final dive into the abyss… and a little hope… and when a person's got nothing, hope's about the kindest thing you can give her. Or the cruelest… he reminds me of someone… somethin' about him smells stink to me…_

"Excuse me," Elizabeth tapped Samantha Kemp on the shoulder.

"What do you want?" The question didn't sound rude so much as exhausted.

"I was wondering… what is the fare for the Metro?"

"Depends on where you're going, hun. It's a dollar on all stops between here and Fort Frolic because it's on the mainline, but if you're heading to Minerva's Den or somewhere far off it's going to cost you a little extra."

"And this applies to all forms of transportation within Rapture?" Elizabeth was beginning to miss the skylines.

Miss Kemp laughed. "Where the hell've you been, hun? Course it does. This is Andrew Ryan's city." She looked ruefully at the ticket stub in her hand. "Got to pay to damn well breathe down here, don't you?"

 _… the air you breathe is sponged from my account…_

"I… I don't get out much."

"Squatter in Arcadia?"

"Something like that."

"Won't last, you know. There's already talk of that Langford woman charging a fee. All on Andrew Ryan's say-so, of course."

"Of course."

Samantha Kemp blew a strand of hair out of her face. "Look, hun, I've had a long night, I got a kid waiting for me up in Artemis Suites and this'll be the last bathysphere until lunch."

"I'm sorry. I won't keep you."

Elizabeth began to walk away. Samantha Kemp watched her for a moment, and then called out:

"Hey, miss?"

"Yes?"

"You don't got a ticket, do you? How you expect to get around Rapture without a Metro pass? Or cash?"

Elizabeth didn't have an answer. She had considered pit pocketing the shoppers milling around the pavilion, but there were cameras and security bots everywhere. There was a constant prickle on the back of her neck as computerized eyes tracked her through the department store. In Columbia, at least, picking up the stray silver eagle could be done discreetly.

"No," she said honestly, "I don't have any money."

Samantha Kemp nodded sympathetically. "Don't be embarrassed. I get it, I do. It's the economy, isn't it? One day you're working the graveyard shift at the Atlantic Express Depot and the next thing you know, that Kinkaide fella's gone and replaced the trains with bathyspheres and you're suddenly out of a job. How do they expect us to pull ourselves up by our damn bootstraps if there ain't any boots going around?"

"You're working now," Elizabeth noted, gesturing to Samantha Kemp's nametag.

"But for how long, hun? Ryan and Fontaine keep trading blows but it's us who get caught in the thick of it. Most of us work for Industries or Futuristics, but when each of the two of 'em are trying to come up on top, us poor folk are the ones going home hungry."

"So whom do you work for? Ryan or Fontaine?"

"Fontaine's Test Drive's what's keeping my kid fed and housed in Artemis, for now. We all thought Frank Fontaine was going to be different, you know? While Ryan was banging supermodels up in Fort Frolic and doing gin slings with Sander fucking Cohen, Fontaine was always talking about how he was going to lift Rapture right out of the old man's wallet, no fuss, no muss. Turns out he's just as crooked. Least Ryan's a little more honest about it."

"Either of them hiring now?"

Samantha snorted. "You got a better chance getting a record deal with that loony bin in Fort Frolic than working for Andrew Ryan. But," she considered for a moment, "Fontaine's guys are always looking for more hands down at the fisheries. You might have some luck there."

Security Chief Sullivan had mentioned something about Fontaine Fisheries. It didn't sound like an exceptionally pleasant place. Through some of the Doors, Elizabeth heard gunshots; saw blood swirling around the pylons of an old pier. Smelled the gutted fish and the sulfur. "Where can I find Frank Fontaine?"

Samantha pointed straight up. "He'll be in his office, round the back of the Manta Ray Lounge. Just tell Reggie you're looking for work."

"Thank you, Samantha."

"Don't thank me yet, hun. This is Frank Fontaine we're talking about. You mess with Andrew Ryan, you end up in Persephone. You mess with Frank Fontaine, you get put out an airlock and told to walk on home… so I've heard. At least with Ryan, you get some air to curse his name with."

Elizabeth blinked, and the Doors opened onto the endless dark, the crushing blackness trapped under the weight of the ocean. Screams bubbling and floating towards the surface…

"I see your point." Elizabeth rubbed her thimble and sighed. For a moment, Samantha thought she looked very old. "But I can look after myself."

"Yeah," Samantha said quietly, "you can, can't you? All the same, good luck to you, hun."

The line for the bathysphere was down to two people. Samantha hurried to catch the front of the queue.

"Samantha? I have one more question."

"What?"

Elizabeth's blue eyes looked almost black in the dark metro station. "Do you know a man named Zachary Hale Comstock?"

"Nope." Samantha shook her head. "Never heard of him."


	3. III

August 16th, 1958

 _Audio Transcript – 'Faces'_

 _[Columbia and Rapture aren't so different. Always a lighthouse… always a city. As above, so below. But in Columbia, at least we could get from place to place with a clever turn of phrase or a lock pick. Or a few well-aimed bullets; your prerogative, Booker. In Rapture, the almighty Ryan dollar is more than a currency. It's the city's lifeblood. I can't do what needs to be done without a way to travel, and if this Fontaine can set me up with work, and an income, then perhaps he will be my way into the city. The only problem is… behind every Door there is a face, and inside each face there is another face, recursive and eternal, like an infinity mirror of reflections. Immediate concerns tell me to make contact with Frank Fontaine. The Doors tell me to stay away.]_

The Manta Ray Lounge was in the Bathysphere DeLuxe showroom of Fontaine's Department Store. Several men with loaded weapons stood guard outside the front door, watching the security bots cagily. When shoppers passed the lounge, they walked a fraction of a degree faster, staring at their shoes as though there were something incredibly interesting ingrained in the floor.

Elizabeth moved against the flow of the crowd. Tears pulled at the edges of the Manta Ray Lounge, like lenticular film superimposed over reality. A small moment passed, too quickly for the world to remember it, and Elizabeth saw high ceilings, large windows, the sound of fine liquor being poured, a phonograph churning out classy music and people dancing. And then she saw slivers of chipped glass and empty bottles of wine. The maroon liquid ran in rivulets across the countertops, until it was indistinguishable from the bloodstains.

Elizabeth took a deep breath and approached the largest bouncer. He held up a hand.

"Lounge's closed."

"Are you Reggie?"

"Depends who's asking."

"My name is Elizabeth. I have business with Frank Fontaine."

"Don't care if your name's Brigid Tenenbaum, you ain't getting in here. Boss's orders."

"I'm looking for work," Elizabeth insisted. She focused on something in her peripheries, something behind the Doors… a black hand imprinted on a stack of boxes, somewhere deep in the dripping intestines of Rapture; wet ink smeared across beer bottles and bibles. She recognized the boxes as smuggler's crates. "And something tells me Frank Fontaine is going to need all the help he can get in the coming months."

"Oh yeah? What makes you so sure––"

"Andrew Ryan knows about the contraband goods. The fisheries are a smuggling front, aren't they?" Before Reggie could interrupt her, she continued, drawing on her past and future memories: "Fontaine Futuristics was something Ryan could tolerate in his laissez-faire dreamworld, but how long do you think Ryan will let Fontaine and his plasmids nudge him out of a profit before he brings the whole empire crashing down? And you and I, and Frank Fontaine… we all know you can't win an outright battle against Ryan. At least, not yet."

Reggie snorted. "You're awfully well-informed."

"I see a lot," she replied.

"You'd better learn to see something else if you know what's good for you."

Elizabeth glanced at the security bots. "Well, Ryan has his eyes. Perhaps what Frank Fontaine could use are a few more."

Reggie considered her for a moment. The walls between worlds were like wet paper, and behind them, Reggie had already turned her away and Reggie had already taken her to Frank Fontaine. The future existed in duality, as equal possibility. Elizabeth did not know what was going to happen.

"Alright," Reggie said reluctantly, "follow me. Don't speak to nobody or touch nothing, right?"

Elizabeth nodded. She followed Reggie through the Lounge, up a flight of steps to a balcony overlooking the dining hall. Huge windows looked out onto the seafloor. The sand brimmed with iridescent plants and warped, fluted columns of coral. In the distance, the lights of Rapture rippled in the darkness. An abnormally large squid drifted past the windows before chasing a school of minnows through the kelp beds.

Fontaine's hired muscle wandered around the dining area, guarding the entrances to the kitchen and the wine cellar; they ignored Elizabeth and Reggie as they passed. They wound up another flight of stairs towards the executive suite elevator. Reggie removed a key ring from his waist and unlocked the controls. When the door opened, he nudged Elizabeth inside. They rode to the executive suite in stony, tense silence.

Then a Door opened, and when Elizabeth stepped out of the elevator, she wasn't standing in the executive suite of the Manta Ray Lounge. She was walking through the top floor of the Rapture Tower at Point Prometheus. Everything was dark and cold. Figures moved at the edges of the room, the dim light glinting across fish hooks and shingled skin. In the middle of the room was an upright dais. Something was strapped into a heavy metal harness, crucified across the steel. It began to stir in the shadows, as though the bones of Rapture were shifting from their foundations. Two blood-red eyes burned against a face like chiseled granite, lined with malice, devoid of empathy or compassion. It was an evil face. For the first time since Comstock House, Elizabeth felt a thrill of terror slither up her back.

Then the Door closed, and Reggie stood at Elizabeth's side. The executive suite of the Manta Ray Lounge was a large, open space. A curved window dominated the back wall, boasting a stunning view of Rapture. Someone had erected a scale model of the department store in the center of the room. On the other side of the model, lounging behind a massive oakwood desk, a fat cigar hanging out of the corner of his mouth, was Frank Fontaine.

He was completely bald, clean-shaven –– save for a small black mustache –– and dressed in an immaculate suit jacket and waistcoat. A silver pocket watch stuck out of his breast pocket. He would have been handsome if it weren't for the malicious curve of his mouth and his flinty amber eyes. He reminded Elizabeth of a shark: sleek, dangerous, and completely at home at the bottom of the ocean.

"Hey Reggie," Fontaine had a coarse Bronx accent; he addressed his hired muscle, but he was looking intently at Elizabeth, "you know how I said I didn't want no one bothering me this morning? This broad sure as hell don't look like no one to me."

Reggie squirmed. "She's looking for work, boss."

"Every sad sap and his pet poodle are looking for work down here. What makes you so special that you think you can waltz right on in here whenever you like and ask me for a job?"

"Well, boss, I––"

"I ain't talking to you, Reg."

Frank Fontaine stared at Elizabeth. He raked his eyes over her, undressed her. Elizabeth crossed her arms and met Fontaine's amber eyes.

"You're running a long con, Mr. Fontaine," Elizabeth said, choosing her words carefully; she looked past Fontaine, across the threshold of another Door, "the sort of con that lasts far beyond the scope of prolonged interest. Except… men like Andrew Ryan aren't so easily distracted. The fisheries, these plasmids of yours, Fontaine Futuristics… it's all in the name of one massive endgame. You're forging your own Great Chain down here, but while Andrew Ryan is using his to lift Rapture out of the darkness, you're going to anchor her down here, in the deep. Ball and chain." She took a breath. "And I want to help."

Fontaine didn't say anything at first. Then he nodded curtly at Reggie. "Leave."

"Mr. Fontaine––"

"Get. Out."

Reggie didn't say another word. He turned and left the office, closing the door behind him.

Fontaine didn't offer Elizabeth one of the seats in front of his desk. Instead, he stood and stabbed out his cigar.

"You want to help, huh? What makes you so sure I want your help? Hell," he laughed mirthlessly, "what makes you so sure I need help at all?"

"I saw the security bots outside the Lounge, Mr. Fontaine," said Elizabeth. "Only last night, Ryan's security chief was poking around the Silver Fin restaurant. I had an encounter with some splicers down by the Metro station this morning. The walls are closing in."

"This ain't news, sweetheart. Yeah, Ryan got all cockeyed after I opened the orphanage and the home for the poor. It's the solidarity angle at its smartest, ain't it, just the kind of Red stuff that makes Ryan sweat. Poorhouses and breadlines? High-grade bunko. Had to stage support for the mooks, get Ryan and Sinclair and the whole damn Council to squirm up there in their monkey suits. Rapture's my town now."

"With all due respect, Mr. Fontaine, Andrew Ryan may be losing his grip on Rapture, but Rapture sure as hell isn't your town."

Fontaine smirked. He was angry, but he was amused, too. Elizabeth didn't know which was more frightening. "You've got a hell of a lot of nerve, coming up here, telling me my business…"

"It's true. You know it is."

"Ryan can't touch me!"

"Perhaps not, but he can close you in, lock you out of his shining utopia. The security bots, the turrets, even the bathyspheres… I'll bet my life that every means of transportation and defense within Rapture is keyed to Andrew Ryan's genetic code. How difficult do you think it would be for him to cut you off from your markets?"

"You'd bet your life, huh?" Fontaine took a step towards her. He was significantly taller, larger, but Elizabeth didn't move. "I'm sure that won't be too steep a wager for my boys to meet."

"That's why you're hiding here, in the department store."

"I ain't hiding from nobody!" Fontaine raged, inches away from Elizabeth. She still didn't move.

"You know I'm telling the truth. There's a Webley Mark four revolver under your coat; if I was lying, I'd be dead. You and Andrew Ryan have one thing in common, Mr. Fontaine."

"And what would that be, sweetheart?"

"You admire strength. And I'm the only person in this city strong enough to tell you what you need to hear."

Fontaine sneered. "Proper little hero, ain't you?"

"I'd just hate to see it all go to waste because you underestimated Andrew Ryan."

"Why should you care?" he asked coolly, "You should never mix business with friendship, sweetheart."

… _I'm gonna run Rapture, tits to toes… you've been a pal, but you know what they say: Never mix business with friendship…_

"And never play a man for the short con when you can play him for the long one," countered Elizabeth.

Frank Fontaine studied her. Elizabeth could smell his cologne, and underneath, something fouler… like dead fish and salt and motor oil. It reminded her of Songbird, of mechanical, lifeless things.

Elizabeth snapped back to the present when Fontaine raised his hand. She tensed, but then Fontaine looped his arm around her shoulders and pulled her close.

"I like you, sweetheart. What'd you say your name was?

"I didn't. It's Elizabeth."

"Elizabeth. Lizzie… can I call you Lizzie?"

"No."

"I want to show you something, Lizzie…"

Fontaine steered her towards the back of the office. They faced the huge floor-to-ceiling windows. Below them, Rapture stretched away across the ocean floor. A million lights flickered in the undercurrents, glowing against the deep blue. Bathyspheres zoomed between buildings, and neon signs flashed their advertisements in actinic bursts of green and pink. Fontaine pointed towards the edge of the city, where a huge tower rose towards the surface. Reflected sunlight rippled across the polarized glass and steel.

"You see the Rapture Tower, over at Point Prometheus?"

Elizabeth nodded.

"Under that tower is the Fontaine Futuristics Genetic Research Department. You know what happens there?"

"No, but I'm sure you're going to tell me."

"That's where the magic happens, sweetheart. It's where we got ADAM."

"ADAM?" Elizabeth swallowed, remembering the splicers.

 _… ADAM is a canvas of genetic modification…_

"I got a nice little place down there called the Little Wonders Educational Facility. Me and my pet Kraut scientist take kids, and we put creatures in their bellies that turn 'em into little ADAM factories."

Elizabeth went cold. Through one of the Doors, she saw terrible things… pain. Blood. Children screaming. Too many voices to count. Too many to imagine.

Fontaine continued, "We feed 'em, until they burst. Then our little brats spew enough ADAM to keep this city dosed up until judgment day. Without ADAM, ain't no plasmids. Ain't no plasmids, ain't no Fontaine Futuristics."

Elizabeth could already see where the conversation was going. "But something's gone wrong."

"The brats are going missing, and you ain't gonna sell cheese without a cow. The orphanage quota ain't matching the processing quota. Someone is spiriting 'em away in between."

"And you think Ryan's kidnapping these… children?"

"Don't know from nothing." He grinned, like a shark does before taking a bite out of your leg. "But now I got someone to find out."

"Me."

"Think of it as a little private contract gig. Play the shamus. You find the abbreviated piece of nothing that's been skiving them brats off Frank Fontaine, and I'll consider you a valued business partner."

"And if I don't?"

Fontaine tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. Elizabeth recoiled from his touch, and his arm around her shoulders tightened. "Me and Frau Kraut went through a whole lot a mooks trying to find hosts for the slugs before we settled on the Little Sisters. The early fellas… we hurt 'em. We hurt 'em real bad." He glanced at Elizabeth's stomach. "I wonder how much ADAM you'd cough up before––"

Elizabeth shrugged him off. "I'd rather not find out, thank you."

"That's what I like to hear. You double-cross Frank Fontaine, you don't get no do-overs. You're busto, you hear me? You're spitting nickels."

"What do you want me to do?" If Elizabeth could get into the heart of Rapture on Fontaine's little job, she might be able to track down Comstock…

"Tenenbaum's the one who's got me thinking. She's always been a little... funny," Fontaine gestured to his head; Elizabeth saw his point, "but now she ain't… acting herself. She ain't talking. And that slant, Suchong, he thinks he can stiff me. Ryan's caught his eye, but when I pay good money for state of the art science, I ain't going belly-up just because some yellow bastard found himself a higher bidder."

 _… I can promise you… I ain't never been one to lose with dignity… faces within faces..._

"Who was the last child to go missing?"

"Some little brat from the orphanage, never made it to Point Prometheus… Sarah or Sandra or something…"

 _… It's okay, Sally… Look… look, it's your doll! See, she's come to see you! We're going home…_

 _HELP ME_

 _Sally… I'm sorry. Sally…_

"Sally…" Elizabeth stumbled. Blood rushed in her ears. "Her name is Sally."

Fontaine stared. Elizabeth had gone very pale. Something seemed broken and disjointed behind her eyes, flickering, like the eyes of some spliced-up lunatic. And she had developed a violent nosebleed.

Fontaine wondered just who she was… whether she was as stir crazy as the rest of them, how she knew so much about business in Rapture. At the very least, he decided, she was a damn sight better than that gloomy bitch Tenenbaum. She was more than just a pretty face. Elizabeth had brains, and she knew how to use them. She was the sort of broad fellas underestimated, a broad who made sure they lived to regret it. A part of Fontaine admired her for that. Another part of him wanted to fuck her into next week. Hell, on any other day, he would have had her up against the desk, temper some of that cheek… but Ryan was planning a raid on the Fisheries sometime in the next few months, and Fontaine had other things on his mind.

Another time, he promised himself.

Fontaine handed Elizabeth a wad of Ryan dollars. "Take a bathysphere to Point Prometheus. Found out what's eating Tenenbaum, what Suchong's doing on the sly, and where the hell those little brats are disappearing off to, and there's more in it for you."

"I don't want your money, Mr. Fontaine. My price is information. I'm looking for a man named Zachary Comstock."

"Now, sweetheart, I make it my business to know what's what in Rapture, and I ain't ever heard of nobody by that name."

"He would be an older man, white hair, long white beard, the deeply pious type––"

Fontaine burst into derisive laughter. "Pious, eh? This is Rapture, Lizzie! God is dead down here." Elizabeth didn't move. "Alright, alright, I'll keep my peepers peeled. You find the stiffers, I'll find your man. And if you try anything, you so much as piss in the general direction of Hephaestus, I got a whole lot of splicers hungering for their ADAM, and they ain't picky who it comes from."

Elizabeth snatched his money. "I'll find your Sally, Mr. Fontaine," she said, her tone like ice, "I'll find who's taking your precious Little Sisters, and we'll be out of each other's lives like ships passing in the night."

Fontaine sat down behind his desk. He leant back in his chair and smiled a wide, white smile. "I don't think so. We'll see each other again, Lizzie sweetheart, sure as eggs is eggs. Just you wait."

Elizabeth turned to leave. Reggie opened the door to the office. When Elizabeth was far away from the Manta Ray Lounge, she collapsed against a column, shaking.

 _… the Little Sisters aren't girls anymore –– they're monsters… they don't sound like monsters when we take them… They cry… Lord help me, they cry... Ryan's locked up the Square and thrown away the key… All I wanted was to work, dammit… to take care of my family… Why the fuck couldn't you just let me work…_

 _Names within names. A face behind a face._

 _Sally._

Elizabeth took a deep breath. There was one Door she couldn't look behind. So long as she kept telling herself the Door was locked, the possibility was as good as real. But it wasn't locked. Elizabeth just didn't want to see. The Door was broken, splintered. And behind the Door, there was nothing. Not even darkness. A shadow within a shadow. An end.

Elizabeth didn't look behind the Door because she knew she would meet Frank Fontaine again. And when she did, he was going to kill her.


	4. IV

September 7th, 1958

 _Audio Transcript – 'Fontaine'_

 _[There are times when you don't need Doors or Tears to see the future. Such is the case with Frank Fontaine. It's likely that if and when someone finds these audio diaries, that man will be sitting comfortably at the pinnacle of Rapture's social hierarchy. Andrew Ryan may have founded Rapture, but in light of a lack of progeny, I believe Fontaine has his eye on the inheritance. He is charismatic, intelligent… and the most ruthless man I've ever met. I shudder to think what he would do to me if… regardless, while his patronage comes with considerable risk, it is not without its benefits. Fontaine's name opens many doors in Rapture, doors even I cannot see. I just fear what I may find behind them.]_

"Goddammit! The supplies need to be shipped to _laboratory_ , not to damn library!"

Elizabeth pretended to concentrate on the books. But with the racket Yi Suchong was making, even if Elizabeth wasn't trying to eavesdrop, ignoring him would have been exceptionally difficult.

"Look, Dr. Suchong," Suchong's assistant –– the man's name was Marcel Raghnall –– glanced around the Mendel Memorial Library to make sure they weren't overheard; Elizabeth ducked behind the bookshelf, "we're playing a dangerous game, see? I don't know how I feel about your parts coming to Point Prometheus at all. This here is Fontaine's patch… bastard will have our guts for garters if he knew you were contracting out to Andrew Ryan––"

"Suchong well aware of Fontaine," snapped Dr. Suchong. "Fontaine scary son of a bitch, but Ryan and Gilbert Alexander cheap sons of bitches. Who are they hiring for such errands? Sinclair? Suchong cannot be expected to work under these conditions."

"I don't reckon Ryan or Fontaine banked on you working for the two of 'em at the same time, guv, each without the other knowing."

"No." Suchong seemed to calm down. "No. Both men desperate. They need Suchong. With the little brats going missing, Fontaine need fresh supplies of ADAM and Ryan need jump on Fontaine. I play cards right, this could be very good for Suchong."

"What about Tenenbaum? She's beginning to suspect something. You don't need rivet guns and helmets to map out nucleotide sequences and all. What if that Yid decides to tell Fontaine about the diving suits, the gene splicing, the grafting… or if any dick, tom, or harry starts asking questions about that lad Johnny Topside. We got a lot of loose ends, Dr. Suchong. Tenenbaum is the least of 'em."

Suchong's expression soured. "Tenenbaum. Quite a little monster Fontaine's dug up. Disgusting woman. Suchong would prefer she stay scarce. Fortunately, she seems content to spend her time with her dirty little brats in the genetics laboratory. Suchong has wider prospects. Ryan may be cheap son of a bitch, but he knows market. He can sell the Little Sisters as commodity, as luxury, while Fontaine simply sticks ADAM in dirty needles."

Marcel nodded. "There's hypos littering the streets of Rapture. There's just something about jabs that rubs people the wrong way. And if the Little Sisters keep going missing––"

"Then Suchong must find alternative method of producing ADAM..."

"They ain't thin on the ground yet, Dr. Suchong. The Little Sisters are vanishing, but there's still plenty of tykes to go around, what with the orphanage and all. Apollo Square is just about crawling with abandoned young-uns."

Suchong shook his head. "Soon, Ryan will move against Fontaine. Suchong suspect Fontaine's days are numbered. There are plenty of little girls, but there are plenty of dead people in Rapture, too."

"I don't follow."

Elizabeth brought her ear close to the divider, straining to hear them as Suchong lowered his voice:

"ADAM remains in body of splicer after death. Here is Suchong's problem, Mr. Raghnall: Little Ones are repulsed by corpses. Must find a way to make gathering more… attractive, maybe if we program them to see bodies as something more appealing: kitty cats, chocolate bars, some other stupid thing these children enjoy. In any case, Suchong pursuing own line of research with Dr. Alexander. If Little Sisters become gatherers, they will need protection from splicers. They will need… companions."

Elizabeth pushed aside a dusty textbook and peeked through the gap in the shelves. Yi Suchong was a small, rigid Korean man with an unfriendly face and cold eyes. He looked perpetually disdainful behind his wire-rim glasses. Elizabeth knew his type: egocentric, self-serving. An opportunist. He took to Rapture's objectivist society like Frank Fontaine took to grifts. Elizabeth didn't care for him at all.

"I don't disagree with you, Dr. Suchong, not at all," said Raghnall. "But Ryan's not gone and put Fontaine on ice quite yet. If Mr. Fontaine asks about those diverted funds, or if he learns about your little side project with Gilbert Alexander, there's going to be trouble."

"You need not worry, Mr. Raghnall. Suchong continue supply of ADAM to Fontaine Futuristics, and Fontaine say nothing. Suchong continue Protector research with Gilbert Alexander, Ryan say nothing. But if Ryan's errand boys continue sending Protector materials to goddamn library, then we have problem. And Ryan insists we cut cost by taking clinical subjects from Sinclair's prison, physically and mentally broken by plasmid use, and turn _them_ into line of Protectors. Ryan can write off financials, but now we must deal with half-mad, metal-suited spliced lunatics from Persephone running around, attacking anything that comes in from outside of lab! I must speak to Dr. Alexander…"

Suchong stalked out of the library, muttering something into a personal audio diary. Marcel Raghnall pretended to collect several books from the circulation desk. He didn't look up when he called out: "You get all that?"

Elizabeth emerged from behind the bookshelf. "Yes. Discretion doesn't seem to rank very highly in Dr. Suchong's list of concerns. His egocentricity really is astonishing."

"Look, I ain't searching for fuss." Marcel shuffled from foot to foot. He avoided eye contact with Elizabeth. "But when this mess comes to a boil I don't want to find myself looking down the dangerous end of Frank Fontaine's pistol, right?"

She handed Mr. Raghnall a roll of Ryan dollars. The young man pocketed the money. "Mr. Fontaine values loyalty," Elizabeth promised. "He simply wants to know who took Sally, and if that person intends to take any more Little Sisters."

"It's not the good Doctor, Miss Elizabeth, rest assured of that; Suchong's got too much staked in this plasmid business. Besides, he's had his own fair share of difficulties working with that toff Alexander."

"What sort of difficulties?"

"Can't get the little brats to imprint, can he? You know, like baby ducks imprinting on their mums."

Elizabeth smiled thinly. "I know what imprinting means."

"Dr. Alexander's been testing pheromones and the like down at the Persephone detention center. That fat bastard Sinclair provides Suchong and Alexander with human test subjects, usually whatever seditious slimeball so much as looked at Ryan sideways in the last week. They're turning 'em into monsters down there. And it's all on Ryan's dime; Fontaine doesn't know a damn thing."

"I wouldn't count on that, Mr. Raghnall. Frank Fontaine sees a lot."

Marcel paled. "Uh, right. But, but… the work's not going nowhere, right? The bleeding brutes won't pair with their brats. Suchong's desperate to find some way to get the two of 'em to bond, so that when Ryan cops off Fontaine, which we all reckon'll happen sooner rather than later, Suchong'll have some bargaining power over the Little Sister gatherers. Can't make a profit if you can't protect the little tykes, what with them splicers screaming all over the place."

Elizabeth conceded the point.

Yi Suchong was a narcissistic son of a bitch. Despite being a capable scientist and a smart businessman, he was universally despised by his coworkers. It hadn't taken too much of Frank Fontaine's money to get Marcel Raghnall to talk. And based on the Genetic Research Department payroll, Suchong was officially under contract, but he had never completely discontinued business relations with Ryan Industries. According to Raghnall, several months ago, Andrew Ryan had made contact with Suchong through Augustus Sinclair, the owner of the Sinclair Solutions research firm, and something of a cloak-and-dagger man –– polishing the stains on Ryan's gleaming utopia.

One of Sinclair's associates, Dr. Gilbert Alexander, knew the Little Sisters were coveted commodities, and that they would need protection in the foreseeable task of gathering ADAM from Rapture's dead. Suchong had opened a slush fund, funneling resources from Fontaine to fund private gene splicing projects with Alexander. Behind Fontaine's back, they were working on mental conditioning programs that forced Protectors to guard the Little Sisters.

"Suchong would sell his own mother for project funds." Elizabeth noted, "But you're right: kidnapping Little Sisters doesn't conform to his business interests."

"Are…" Marcel swallowed, "are you going to tell Fontaine, about Suchong's work with Dr. Alexander? I didn't have anything to do with it, Miss Elizabeth, honest…"

Elizabeth felt a stab of pity for Marcel Raghnall. She had been working undercover in the Mendel Memorial Library for several weeks, and everyone lived in constant fear of Frank Fontaine. She found it hard to believe that anyone in Fontaine's employ would even entertain the notion of a double-cross. Suchong none withstanding, fear of bloody retribution at the hands of Fontaine's splicers kept most people cowed.

"No, Mr. Raghnall," she said quietly, "my business isn't with Suchong or his private projects. I just want to find these missing girls."

"You look into Tenenbaum yet?" Marcel suggested. "I mean, she's a clever clogs and a bloody good worker, but she's always been a queer sort…"

"Where would I find Brigid Tenenbaum?"

"That's the question, innit? She's got posh digs up in Mercury Suites, but she makes herself scarce nowadays."

Elizabeth nodded. "Do you think a man named Zachary Comstock could be responsible for Fontaine's missing Little Sisters?"

Raghnall scrunched his face. "Never heard of him, love. Unless he's one of Sinclair's lot down in the detention center––"

"Never mind." She gave Raghnall another roll of Ryan dollars. "Thank you for your help. Frank Fontaine values your loyalty."

"Suchong won't hear a dickie bird from me."

Elizabeth left the Mendel Memorial Library. In the main hall, just outside the Rapture Metro, she checked a map of the city. Mercury Suites was one of the residential housing areas in Olympus Heights, just short of Apollo Square.

 _… I seen she had a blanket half-knitted by her bed. It was nice, you know, black and red, real pretty… didn't seem right to leave it lying there, lying there all by itself…_

Elizabeth shivered. She looked down at her own attire: black and red. In the shadowy foyer of Point Prometheus, her crimson necktie looked like a bloodstain under her collar. Perhaps a harbinger of things to come. Perhaps an echo. Elizabeth felt as though she was walking on the face of a mirror, caught between the reflections of all things. Pain and violence facing each other and recurring eternally in the speculum of infinity.


	5. V

September 7th, 1958

 _Audio Transcript – 'Impossibility'_

 _[When I was locked in my tower, I enjoyed reading Sherlock Holmes. In light of some baffling mystery, Holmes always told Dr. Watson that if one eliminated the impossible, whatever remained, however improbable, must be the truth. Sage advice. The problem is… such advice can be uncomfortable… if you happen to be one of the impossibilities that needs reconciling. I am standing in a city at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean, where people can shoot lightning from their fingertips and wield fire in the palm of their hand. The Prophet would call it the work of God. Frank Fontaine would call it 'high-grade scratch.' And those like Brigid Tenenbaum and Yi Suchong would call it science. I suppose everything is impossible… until it happens.]_

As the Olympus Heights trolley trundled towards Mercury Suites, Elizabeth was surprised to find that a security barricade had been erected around the entrance to Apollo Square, to prevent anyone from entering or leaving the district. Several members of Andrew Ryan's security detail were posted around the bulkheads. When the trolley stopped at Mercury Suites and Elizabeth disembarked, two turrets tracked her movements towards the foyer.

"Expecting trouble?" Elizabeth asked one of the security officers.

"Just splicers." The man shrugged. "In case one of 'em gets tetchy and decides to try his luck. Had one of the shocky blighters messing about in a puddle the other day, damn near blew me head off."

"The security is heavier around Apollo Square. What's going on over there…"

Elizabeth trailed off. The security officer blinked uncomprehendingly at her.

"You having a laugh?"

Elizabeth pursed her lips. "Humor me."

"Well, it's where they hang Fontaine's lot innit, them smugglers. Apollo Square's become a prison."

It was Elizabeth's turn to look bemused. Smuggling contraband as a capital crime: it didn't seem to mesh with Andrew Ryan's objectivist philosophy or his laissez-faire economics.

 _… my god… I had no idea… there's armed men all over the place… I saw a woman climb over the fence trying to escape… one of Ryan's guards pointed at her, and she lit on fire… just like that. What's happening here…_

 _… Hey jiggle jiggle, the squirm and the wriggle, the hangman's knotted his noose…_

It took Elizabeth a few seconds to realize that the security officer wasn't speaking from behind the Doors: "And when McDonagh comes and airs the place out, when the wind blows the right way, we can still smell 'em, rotting and black. Sullivan just leaves 'em dangling up there…"

"I have to go." Elizabeth pushed past the young man. He watched her, shrugged, and then aimed his shotgun in the general direction of Apollo Square.

Elizabeth collapsed against the foyer wall. Her breathing came in harsh, ragged gasps. She shivered violently.

"What," she said through gritted teeth, "what the hell is wrong with this place…"

"Why raise questions you don't wish to hear the answer to?" asked Rosalind Lutece.

"All those people, Andrew Ryan killed all those people… and just because they wanted a taste of the surface. Fontaine's activities are criminal, but they don't warrant hanging! It's obscene."

"Rapture is a world its own," said Robert Lutece, "any hope for a better one destroys the illusion of utopia."

"And hopes, much like quantum superpositions, have a tendency to collapse."

"Curiosity killed Schrödinger's cat."

"As did tyranny, exploitation, extermination."

Elizabeth rounded on the Luteces. "What is the point of Rapture if her leaders perpetuate the same oppression they purport to hate? They're becoming their own enemies."

"A famous man once said––"

"And a famous man will say––"

"Know thine enemy as thou knowest thyself."

"In Rapture, to know thine enemy _is_ to know thyself."

"There must be something someone can do," said Elizabeth.

"If it helps you to believe so, then I shall not be the one to disillusion you."

"Nor I."

"So that's it. Andrew Ryan and Frank Fontaine will drive these people to ruin, bury them here at the bottom of the sea. And there's nothing I can do. Worse, I've become a part of it!"

"You came here to find Comstock."

"You did not come here to play God."

"Your father tried his hand in the prophet business."

"And look how well that turned out for him."

"I can see everything." Elizabeth's eyes blazed. "I can change the future because I know what's going to happen. There's nothing I can't do! Ryan, Fontaine… I can end them both…"

Rosalind and Robert grew quiet. The adjacent silence was long and heavy. Elizabeth took a few deep, shuddering breaths. She was angry and she was sad. In that moment, she missed Booker so much it hurt. The grief was a hole in her chest, a void only fury and hate could fill.

"Vengeance. I suppose it runs in the family." She was holding a pair of scissors and Daisy Fitzroy was bleeding out across her shoes. She was standing in the entrance of Mercury Suites and the Luteces were waiting for her to make a decision.

"No one in this city has heard of Zachary Comstock," said Elizabeth haggardly. "And Fontaine's search is going around and around in circles."

"Not circles," said Rosalind Lutece.

"Spirals," said Robert Lutece.

"Tunneling deeper and deeper."

"To something hidden underneath."

"Faces within faces," murmured Elizabeth.

"A masked visage."

"A false authenticity."

"And a truth hidden at the heart of every lie."

Just when Elizabeth thought she was beginning to make sense of the Luteces, they managed to say something that renewed her confusion. Their snippets of advice usually made sense in retrospect, which was unfortunate, because the Luteces weren't bound to the constraints of linear time. And when Elizabeth entered Mercury Suites, both Rosalind and Robert were gone. She resigned herself yet again to being denied a straight answer.

The apartments rose in tiers above Elizabeth's head. A ramp spiraled up a central elevator shaft towards the higher levels. There was a keypad inlaid in the elevator panel, and a guard stationed outside the door.

"Are you going to let me up?" she asked him.

"Sorry, lady, this here goes to Frank Fontaine's penthouse on the top floor. Ain't nobody getting in without the boss's say-so."

Elizabeth frowned, but she didn't want to cause an argument. She began to climb the ramp. According to the directory in the foyer, Brigid Tenenbaum's apartment was on the second floor.

She passed Yi Suchong's apartment and Sander Cohen's, and several more with names she didn't recognize. Mercury Suites was relatively deserted. There weren't many residents to begin with, and that late in the morning, Elizabeth expected that most of them were away at work. She passed one man with a pinched face and greasy black hair hauling camera equipment down the ramp. He bumped into Elizabeth, muttered an apology, and then continued to the bottom floor. When Elizabeth reached Tenenbaum's door, she had forgotten about him.

She knocked. And she waited.

When no one responded after the fifth knock, Elizabeth pressed her ear to the door. "Brigid Tenenbaum… Dr. Tenenbaum?" Elizabeth sighed. "Doctor, I have to speak with you."

Elizabeth closed her eyes. She saw behind Tenenbaum's Door, into a future that was and wasn't quite like the one Rapture would know. A tall, thin woman walked down a narrow corridor. Rivulets of mildew dripped down the walls. Water pooled in crags on the floor. The air was cold, leaden with the smell of brine and blood. The corridor seemed to stretch far away into the distance, as though the walls were telescoping to a point on the horizon. The thin woman had her back turned to Elizabeth as she stepped between piles of bodies stacked against the walls. Then Elizabeth realized: the bodies _were_ the walls, hundreds of them, stacked in parallel rows like bricks. The bodies belonged to little children, girls, dressed in dirty dresses and pinafores. Their distended stomachs had been torn open. The spotlight had gone out in their wide, bulging eyes. There were thousands of them, and as the woman disappeared down the corridor, the little girls' dead eyes tracked her steps, watching her, the whites orbs rolling in their sockets. The sight turned Elizabeth's stomach.

"Brigid," Elizabeth spoke quietly against the apartment door, "Dr. Tenenbaum, we've all done things we desperately wish we could undo."

Elizabeth paused. "But those regrets just become part of who we are, along with everything else. What is done cannot be undone. We live, and we remember. There are better things ahead than what we leave behind. Trust me."

Suddenly, something flashed in Elizabeth's peripheries. She looked towards the balcony on the first floor, where the greasy man from before sat behind a tripod. He was replacing the film in his Dacora camera. A burnt flash bulb rested at his feet.

"Hey!" she called. The greasy man froze. "You down there!"

Elizabeth hurried towards the ramp. If someone was sneaking photographs of her, then perhaps someone knew of her job for Fontaine. And Frank Fontaine didn't seem the sort of man with much patience for security leaks. Elizabeth couldn't afford to lose her anonymity.

The man was hastily packing his equipment when Elizabeth reached him. She grabbed his arm.

"You were taking photos." It wasn't a question. Elizabeth spoke brusquely, "Why? For whom?"

The man sneered at her. "Look, lady, my business is my business."

"You can't just take pictures of me!"

"I damn well can! Freedom of the press, missy. And this paparazzi ain't about to be pushed around by some dish with a profile problem!"

Elizabeth let go of him. "You're… you're paparazzi? Why on earth are you following me? I'm no one."

"Got that right, missy. But a pretty bird poking around the digs of Fontaine's Kraut dolly? Well, it's too juicy a snappy to pass up."

Elizabeth blinked. "Tenenbaum and Fontaine are…?"

"Course they are. And I don't know what you're up to, lady, but the Tribune's been clamoring for every juicy scoop on Rapture's power couple. And the Editor and Ryan'll pay double for any snappies of another," he looked Elizabeth up and down, "another dish on Fontaine's buffet table, so to speak. Tarnish the old crook's silver."

"Ryan? _Andrew Ryan?_ You can't publish those photos." Or Fontaine will kill me, likely in the most protracted and painful way he can manage, Elizabeth wanted to say, but didn't.

"This is my work, lady!"

"This is my life! Please," she reached for the camera, but the greasy man snatched it away. "I came to talk to Brigid Tenenbaum on work-related business; I want no part in her personal affairs, or Fontaine's."

"I'll do what I damn well please! Now scram, before I call Ryan security!"

"Now now Mr. Noble," purred a voice from behind Elizabeth, "that isn't at all polite, is it?"

The paparazzi went chalk white. He searched for something to say as he fumbled with his film canisters.

"Ah, uh… Mr. Cohen," Noble stammered, "I didn't see you there…"

Elizabeth turned around. A short, slim man stood behind her. He wore an immaculate dress jacket and winged-collar shirt, as though he was preparing for an evening at the opera. His jet-black hair had been oiled until it gleamed. His skin was powdered white, his cheeks daubed in rouge and his mustache meticulously waxed. He had unusually bright hazel eyes, glittering dangerously in the dim light of Mercury Suites. He made the hairs on the back of Elizabeth's neck stand on end.

 _… when you needed my star light, I illuminated you… now I rot, waiting for an audience that doesn't… ever… come…_

Sander Cohen stepped towards Noble. The paparazzi stumbled backwards.

"Now then, Mr. Noble, if this lovely young woman finds fault in your pictorial portrayal, then to display that art is to censure the artist, wouldn't you agree?"

"I-I suppose so, Mr. Cohen."

"Wouldn't want to bait the critics, now would we?"

"No, Mr. Cohen."

"Will you publish those photographs, Mr. Noble?"

"I think," the man's Adam's apple bobbed up and down nervously, "I think I can find a new scoop."

"And such a scoop you will find! It is the duty of the artist to capture life in all its sensual intimacies, its delicate and subtle nuances, the little tastes, the gentle touches…"

"Yes, Mr. Cohen."

"Run along now, little shutterbug."

Elizabeth doubted she had seen a man of Noble's age move so quickly. The paparazzi scuttled down the ramp towards the ground floor, disappearing from Mercury Suites.

Sander Cohen turned towards Elizabeth. She swallowed past a lump in her throat. Of everyone she had met in Rapture, of all the insane ADAM addicts and megalomaniacs, Sander Cohen frightened Elizabeth the most. There was something about his eyes, something that went far beyond passion or insanity.

Elizabeth was intimately acquainted with senseless violence, with burning psychosis like a fever in the mind. She remembered the lynching and the scalping of the Vox Populi as they moved through the streets of Columbia. She remembered Daisy Fitzroy daubing her face in the blood of the slain Jeremiah Fink.

Elizabeth knew the difference between duty and pleasure seeking, and Sander Cohen enjoyed the madness. He gloried in the chaos of Rapture.

"Hello, my dear," he said in a low, soft voice, "I must apologize for Mr. Noble. Alas, he can get quite carried away in the pursuit of his craft. It happens to the best of artists, I suppose."

"I wouldn't know. I'm not an artist."

"The artist is not the man with a brush in his hand and paint on his smock. The artist transcends time and place, provides answers to life's unspoken questions and seeks a nonpareil apotheosis in all things. He creates… and destroys, when necessary." His voice lowered to a whisper: "I see the essence of beautiful destruction within you, the _éphémère_ screaming inside your chest, desperate to escape, like a bird in a cage. You see more than most, young lady."

Elizabeth crossed her arms. "Not in the way you think, Mr. Cohen. Excuse me––"

"Come now, my dear, don't play coy with me. You are an artist on commission. You're dancing to the tune of that bald buck Fontaine, are you not?"

 _… you can hardly blame me for doing well by doing good…_

She said nothing.

"Few are the patrons who truly understand the struggle of the artist. Fewer are those who recognize it in themselves." Cohen smiled a perfect smile. "You are working for Fontaine. Why else would anyone shadow the residence of that harridan Tenenbaum––"

"You may be uncommonly intuitive, Mr. Cohen," Elizabeth interrupted, "as an artist or not, but as a businessman, you ought to respect the value of discretion. Thank you for interceding with Mr. Noble, but I have other matters to see to…"

"And as a businessman, allow me to tempt you with a proposition, Miss Elizabeth."

Elizabeth had absolutely no idea how Sander Cohen knew her name, but she wasn't entirely surprised. "Whatever it is you're offering, I'm not interested."

"My dear, Frank Fontaine's days are numbered, and with it, your job prospects. And let me assure you, the number in question isn't even in the double digits. Yes, he wants you to track down those disgusting little moppets of his, but soon, his entire ghastly enterprise will be gone, and those little ones will fade into irrelevancy. Their disappearances will become immaterial."

"What do you want, Cohen?"

"I want you to be my guest in Fort Frolic this evening, at the Fleet Hall." Elizabeth realized that Cohen rarely blinked. His hazel eyes were red-rimmed and wild. "And the Rapture regulars so rarely turn down invitations from Sander Cohen."

"At the risk of puncturing your ego," Elizabeth snapped, none too apologetically, "I have better things to do. Good day."

She began to walk away, but she could feel Cohen's electric, insane gaze crawling along her skin.

"The Fleet Hall, little songbird, midnight," he called after her, "if you should change your mind… or if you wish to find the man you're looking for."

Elizabeth froze. "What did you say?"

"Quid pro quo, Elizabeth dear." Cohen raised a mask to his face: a white rabbit outlined in velvet. "You never get something for nothing in Rapture! And in the meanwhile, I have tickets for a little outing at the Rapture Memorial Museum, for an exhibition I positively cannot miss!"

As Sander Cohen drifted towards the trolley, the Luteces' words came back to Elizabeth…

 _The masked visage…_

She almost followed him. And then the eyes found her, shining in the dark, broken and disjointed like a half-remembered dream, and Elizabeth shuddered.

Later, on the tram, as she passed the barricades to Apollo Square, it occurred to Elizabeth that people like Ryan and Fontaine and Cohen must be terribly lonely. They had elevated themselves above their peers, and now they stood at the pinnacle of society, alone, looking out over a city they would never really belong to. Rapture was populated with the living and the dead, the mad and the sane, and in the case of men like Sander Cohen, some shadowy liminality in between. Everyone in Rapture seemed to swing between the axes of insanity, but when the pendulum began to sleep, in the moment before the potential energy became kinetic, Elizabeth felt the full weight of Rapture's solitude. In those small moments, the city was an ethereal, phantasmal place. Andrew Ryan and his followers maintained the city through the power of their belief, but the people of Rapture had long ago stopped believing. At least, in Columbia, Comstock's flock sustained the illusion of utopia through a shared conviction, an unwavering adherence to their faith. Elizabeth suspected that the Church of the Great Chain had no parishioners anymore. The buildings stood at the bottom of the ocean, with their empty rooms and leaky corridors. But everything that had once given Rapture life was long gone or long dead, or so spliced up that it made little difference anymore.

Elizabeth wasn't sure if the future was forged by men like Andrew Ryan, through willpower and sheer bloody-mindedness, if every person had a destiny that was somehow fixed, or if they drifted through life like foam on the ocean currents, perambulating between the possibilities determined by the mathematics of the universe. The Luteces probably knew. And certainly, Elizabeth had made the conscious choice to come back to Rapture. She had come back to the city to erase the final iteration of Comstock, like a surgeon cutting out a carcinoma. Perhaps her free will was a ghost of prophecy, and Elizabeth had always been and would forever be a part of Andrew Ryan's legacy, of Frank Fontaine's machinations. If the latter was true, Elizabeth wondered if destroying Comstock was the only way to collapse the echoes. Was there any difference in consequence between vengeance and mercy, collecting the debt, and forgiving it.

Elizabeth thought of Brigid Tenenbaum and Yi Suchong, of Sander Cohen, of Andrew Ryan and Frank Fontaine, and wondered who would be left to forgive their debts, to pay down their accounts, here at the bottom of the sea, when all the Doors finally closed, and all the lights went out.

Perhaps all men are eternally bound to the consequences of their actions, and regret alone distinguishes one world from all others.

Elizabeth disembarked the central tram outside of the Adonis Luxury Resort. The entrance had been designed to resemble a Roman triumphal arch, much like Hadrian's Gate in Athens. Even the spa patrons were dressed in togas. The rotary phone set into one frescoed wall, which began to ring as Elizabeth passed, shattered the illusion of archaism. She had been expecting the call; she picked up the receiver and held it close.

 _"You've gone from little nobody to potential Cohen disciple in a New York minute. You're taking to Ryan's way of doing things like a pig to shit."_

Elizabeth's hand tightened around the receiver; she lowered her voice. "What do you want, Fontaine?"

 _"My boys down in Mercury Suites saw you poking around Frau Kraut's digs. One of 'em said you had a run-in with the paparazzi."_

"It was a misunderstanding. If you see so much, you would know that."

 _"I know that lunatic saved your ass from being plastered all over the front page of the Tribune. You've made a himalayan blunder, sweetheart. You screw up, you got to face the music just like every other sucker in this leaky bucket. Suckers like Marcel Raghnall, for example."_

"Raghnall…"

 _"Been fixing the books in Point Prometheus for six months, trying to put the blinkers on me about Suchong's side projects for that posh fuck Alexander. Reggie says the limey bastard washed up in the Fisheries a few hours ago. Tit for tat."_

"Raghnall was an informant!" cried Elizabeth, her voice cracking. "I promised him clemency!"

 _"Get this in your head, Lizzie: you don't get a second bite at the cherry when you screw over Frank Fontaine; you get a bullet between your pretty eyes and an unmarked grave down in the briny. Clear?"_

Elizabeth fought the urge to slam the phone back on its cradle. Hatred for Fontaine twisted her throat into knots. "Understood," she said stiffly, "it won't happen again."

 _"You're damn right it won't, because you're going to take that fairy freak up on his offer."_

"Pardon?"

 _"You're going to that shindig at the Fleet Hall. Know which side your bread is buttered, Lizzie. Sander Cohen is Ryan's little pal and you ain't gonna get closer to the old man than through the crazies in Fort Frolic."_ There was a harsh cough over the line, what sounded like Fontaine swearing through grimaces of pain.

Elizabeth frowned. "Are… are you all right, Mr. Fontaine? You sound strange––"

 _"Tend to your own knitting, sweetheart."_

She was certain of it: Fontaine's accent, the rough Bronx brogue, sounded softer, less grating. Maybe he was losing his voice. Maybe he was sick. Elizabeth could only hope.

 _"I made Ryan good and mad when I started playing the charity angle,"_ he continued; Fontaine seemed lost in his own thoughts, _"Ryan and his precious Rapture. You don't have to build a city to make people worship you. Just make all the sad saps think they're worth a nickel. That's what Ryan don't understand; power ain't profit. Power ain't cornering a market. Power's other people. I've got a decade down here. Big investment. Copper-bottomed. I can't walk away from a long con like that, but Frank Fontaine can."_

"I don't understand."

 _"You don't got to. Hell, I don't even care about that snotty rat from the orphanage. Plenty of little monsters running around Rapture nowadays. Me and Tenenbaum… chewed the fat on the whole ADAM business. She ain't got nothing to do with the missing girls. But this aquarium's becoming too small a place for a guy like me. And when the dust settles, I'm going to need someone close to Ryan."_

Elizabeth breathed hard. "You promised me… if I discovered who was taking your girls, you would tell me what I need to know."

 _"The game ain't over yet, sweetheart. You give Cohen what he wants, grease some palms, you get your man, I get my peelers in Ryan's provinces."_

"So that's it," she asked incredulously, "you're banking the security of Fontaine Futuristics on a man like Cohen?"

 _"Futuristics was a shotgun approach to running Rapture. I'm banking on the long con, sweetheart. I'm making hay while the sun shines. War's on in full now, and I've got a hell of a surprise for Andrew Ryan. Long time coming._

 _"Goodbye, Lizzie. Try not to miss me too much."_

The line clicked. Elizabeth held the receiver for a long time. Then she placed it back in its cradle, and headed for the Rapture Metro in Olympus Heights.


	6. VI

September 8th, 1958

 _Audio Transcript – 'Choice'_

 _[Suffice it to say, I see the universe a little differently than most people, the Luteces notwithstanding. I understand that reality is fractal. Decisions have the effect of cleaving worlds in two, until there are similar patterns recurring at progressively smaller scales in progressively more alternative realities. Every decision… each tiny moment… Andrew Ryan said that we all make choices, but in the end, our choices make us. He was right. But what if you never made a choice. What if the penitent stayed in the baptismal waters forever, caught in a liminal space between action and consequence. Neither sinner nor saint. Would he be a person at all? Would I?]_

One iteration of Comstock had lead Elizabeth to New York City in 1925. Before stepping through the Tear, what little she knew of the city had come from Booker, from the meager scraps of detail he'd deigned to share as they tore through Columbia.

It had been raining on the night she stumbled onto the corner of 120th Street in lower Manhattan. The brownstone buildings and the lights of Broadway were reduced to watercolor smears behind the rain. Cars splashed through the streets, cutting across the adjacent silence with horns and screeching tires. The entire city was loud and colorful, filled with people who were equally loud and colorful. Along Broadway, a phantasmagoria of lights flashed against the night, beckoning her towards avenues of clubs and theaters promising every manner of earthly fulfillment. By the time Elizabeth reached Comstock, she was exhausted. She felt so small, alone in the canyons of busy streets, searching for stars hidden behind the glare of streetlights, breathing in car fumes and sewage and cigarette smoke. New York fed off the energy of its people.

As Elizabeth navigated the circular atrium of Fort Frolic, she was reminded of her first visit to New York. Decorated in neon lights, with its torchère columns and checkerboard floors, Fort Frolic was a glamorous place –– Broadway crushed into a singularity within a small, bright corner of Rapture. The district featured everything from the fine arts to vaudeville theater to more salacious distractions: casinos and peep shows and strip clubs. Patrons leered at Elizabeth from open doorways. Women, and some men, led guests into velvet booths circled by heavy red curtains; Elizabeth caught their silhouettes gyrating to the music, pulsing and surging like the lights of Broadway long ago. Fort Frolic was a rhythmic fusion of pleasure and art and music, something so stimulating that it made Elizabeth nauseous. Humanity had abandoned most of Rapture. But in Fort Frolic, there was too much of it.

The Fleet Hall was on the second floor of the main atrium. Whereas most of the boutiques and bars in Fort Frolic were filled with people, the Fleet Hall looked dark and abandoned. Someone had stuck discarded show bills to the doors. The bulletin board advertised a play several months old. Inside, the lights had been turned off.

As Elizabeth stood in the corridor, debating whether to knock or simply return to Point Prometheus, a young man scuttled out of the shadows. He gestured for Elizabeth to approach the door. He wore a mask like Sander Cohen's: a white rabbit rimmed in velvet. As Elizabeth drew nearer, she saw that the young man's face was swollen, his skin shingled and enflamed. His pupils were a fulvous yellow, like sulfur.

 _… it's all a game… Cohen, Ryan! Two old birds pullin' on each other's milk sticks…_

Elizabeth knew the man's name: Silas Cobb. She wasn't sure if he remembered it anymore.

"Sander's expecting you…" he said softly, haggardly. Cobb stepped aside, and allowed Elizabeth into the Fleet Hall.

There was no one in the foyer. The ticket office and the projection booth were empty. The entire venue was very dark. On a billboard adjacent to the main theater, a line of turbo bulbs illuminated a sign: _Do not disturb;_ _auditions in progress._

Elizabeth realized that she might have made a big mistake in coming here.

As she stepped into the center aisle of the Fleet Hall, a spotlight blazed to life, illuminating a small circle in the center of the stage. There was a woman haloed in the glare. She was strapped into a harness, dangling at least thirty feet above the stage. Other women lined the left and right aisles, going over pages of sheet music and doing their best to ignore the girl dangling in midair.

There was blood on the stage, and in one corner, a phonograph skipping on a record. Elizabeth swallowed hard.

"FITZPATRICK!" shrieked Sander Cohen, hidden in the shadows. His voice seemed to reverberate from the darkness. "ANOTHER SONG."

Somewhere backstage, a winch began to turn. The woman in the harness rose another few feet. A figure in a rabbit mask adjusted the record on the phonograph, and when the music began, the woman started to sing…

 _"This is a changing world, my dear… New songs are sung — new stars appear… though we grow older year by year, our hearts can still be gay…"_

As the woman sang, she was steadily lowered towards the stage. Then she wavered on a particularly high note, and Cohen howled:

"NO! No no no no this is all WRONG! _FITZPATRICK!_ _"_

The woman in the harness let out an anguished sob. "Oh Jesus Christ, Mr. Cohen, please no…"

Someone released the winch. Elizabeth watched in horror as the woman fell, screaming, towards the stage. She hit the ground and Elizabeth heard her body crack, watched fat bruise over broken bones. Blood began to run across the hardwood, and the woman did not move again

Several attendants hurried onto the stage and cleaned up the body. The harness swung limply from the rafters.

"Bring me another!" commanded Cohen. "I can't stomach these paltry mountebanks and their caterwauling!"

The other girls shifted. One of them began to cry. But no one looked up from their sheet music, and no one approached the stage.

Elizabeth glanced behind her. The splicer, Cobb, was standing at the entrance to the Fleet Hall. He held a pipe wrench in one hand and a loaded pistol in the other. When he saw her, he grinned. His pillbox teeth gleamed in his raw, red mouth. He ran his tongue over his lips.

Elizabeth braced herself. Then she walked towards the stage.

She understood the mechanisms of Cohen's trial: the singers started their performances at roof height, and were gradually lowered if Cohen approved of the performance. If the show didn't make par, the winch was released, and the singer fell. The better the performance, the lower the fall.

Elizabeth had fallen before. But now Booker wasn't there to catch her. She had seen to that.

"Is there another?" purred Cohen, somewhere in the audience, hidden behind the beam of the spotlight.

Elizabeth climbed the stage. She placed the harness over her shoulders and glared at the empty auditorium.

"Just get it over with, Cohen," she muttered.

Fitzpatrick procured another record. He took a step towards the phonograph. Elizabeth shook her head.

"I don't need that."

Fitzpatrick took a deep bow and retreated behind the curtains. And then he began to turn the winch. Elizabeth's shoulders and back ached as she rose higher into the air. She tried to hold herself upright, fighting against the pressure on her chest. Above the glare, she saw Cohen sitting in one of the theater boxes. Even in the darkness, his mad eyes glittered.

Elizabeth looked past her feet. The stage was very far away. It was a long way to fall. No more Tears. No more Doors.

Elizabeth didn't know if she could die. The Luteces had died, and had come back. Perhaps there was no end for her. Just the long sleep, alone in the dark.

She took a deep breath, and hoped Booker would be there to catch her one last time.

Elizabeth began to sing:

 _"There are loved ones, in the glory, whose dear forms you often miss; when you close your… earthly story, will you join them in their bliss?_

 _"Will the circle, be unbroken, by and by, by and by? Is a better… home awaiting, in the sky, in the sky?_

Elizabeth closed her eyes. She saw Booker's face. She saw Comstock's. They were superimposed over each other, and in each eye there was a new face with new memories, whorling down into recursions of themselves like a Fibonacci spiral. In the space between each stanza, the silence seemed to span an age. The adjacent moments elongated as Elizabeth stared into the recurring patterns of death and resurrection, birth and rebirth. As she sang, she thought of autumns being eclipsed by winters that would never end, where the sun never rose and the world stayed trapped under the shadow. She felt time running out, leaves dying, snow falling, a bitter wind lamenting the darkness. She watched the world grow old and souls blow away like smoke, until only a few unlucky ones were left behind, consigned to a history everyone had forgotten about. It brought tears to her eyes, to feel the loneliness of an empty eternity.

The Fleet Hall faded away. The song seemed to slow, until the words froze in glowing fractals in the air. The world telescoped into a corridor of spherical Fresnel lenses, a collimation of light, the walls a mosaic of lighthouse lamps and broken glass. Each shard was a window, and the windows were cracking. Through the splinters, a spectrum of worlds scintillated against the darkness. Elizabeth thought she recognized the specters of faces, grinning at her from the windows –– people she had once known, but had chosen to forget. People she had never known. People she would love, and strangers who would pass through her life like smoke. And when one of them stepped forward, Elizabeth reached out to touch him. Her fingers ghosted empty air, and his face evanesced into filaments of light and color and sound.

 _What do I do… where do I go..._

 _Where we always go: forward._

 _Help me. Please. I can't do this alone._

 _You're not alone. You ain't ever alone._

Elizabeth allowed herself to cry. _I'm so sorry. I shouldn't… I shouldn't have done it. I want my friend back._

 _You did what you had to. Ain't no shame in it, but there ain't no sense in wishing you could go back and do it all over. You made a decision, and you got to live with the consequences. Comes a time when we got to stop running._

 _I miss you so much._

 _Ain't me you miss. The man you miss was drowned in a river in South Dakota. Best you keep him there. Even when you see as much as you do, there are some things you ought to best leave well enough alone._

 _This is a bad place. These people… they're insane._

 _We don't choose the hands we're dealt. We just play our cards best we can. Do what needs to be done. He's here, in the city. You just have to find him._

 _How?_

 _Trust yourself. Finish the song, Elizabeth. Cohen is waiting for you._

 _Don't go… please._

 _Then find me. I'm here, in Rapture. Find me._

 _Okay… Okay._

 _"One by one their seats were emptied. One by one they went away. Now the family is parted. Will it be… complete… one day…"_

Elizabeth's feet touched the stage. She opened her eyes, and wiped away the tears. Fitzpatrick helped her out of her harness, his hands gentle. Under his mask, he was smiling.

"Well done," he whispered, just loud enough for Elizabeth to hear him.

As she left the Fleet Hall, Elizabeth saw Cohen talking to Silas Cobb. The maestro of Fort Frolic locked eyes with her, and smiled.

"And so our collaboration commences, little songbird."


	7. VII

September 11th, 1958

 _Audio Transcript – 'Songbird'_

 _[Cohen's songbird… that's what they're calling me now. Ryan and his inner circle have the Rapture Tribune in their back pockets, and after every performance there's a new puff piece praising the talent of Cohen's newest disciple. If I had known that the macabre tableau vivant in the Fleet Hall was an audition, I would have told Frank Fontaine just where to stick his grand masterplan. Even art in Rapture is built atop labyrinths of deception and death. Every scientific breakthrough, every creative triumph… in trying to reach this so-called 'exaltation of man' they descend further into the primeval abyss they're so desperate to escape. Creation at the cost of destruction. The ouroboros, eating itself in order to survive. When God introduced the serpent to the Garden of Eden, the snake already had half its tail down its throat.]_

The performances began to blur together in a kinetoscope reel of stage lights, applause, and cocktail parties. Elizabeth soon learned that there were certain social obligations that came with being a Cohen disciple that she simply couldn't avoid. Frank Fontaine was correct on one account: Elizabeth had a recurring proclivity for attracting the attention of Rapture's social elite. She had made something of herself. She had played Andrew Ryan's game, and she had won.

At the very least, Elizabeth decided, she had taken advantage of the Rapture penchant for business transactions. She had an understanding with Cohen, a sort of unspoken contractual agreement: in exchange for her artistic drudgery, he would provide Elizabeth with a small apartment above the Fleet Hall and copious amounts of free time. Kyle Fitzpatrick, the man behind the rabbit mask, even brought Elizabeth books from time to time. Elizabeth read about the city, Andrew Ryan, the engineering manuals on the bathyspheres and the pneumonic lines. She even read Frank Fontaine's book for a laugh. Fitzpatrick was only too happy to oblige her. He was a kind, quiet man, astonishingly intelligent, and a prodigy of the piano. Elizabeth wasn't sure how someone so bright could have allowed himself to be enthralled by a man like Sander Cohen, but Kyle didn't like to talk about it. He brought Elizabeth her books, and he reminded her of her rehearsal schedule. Otherwise, their conversations were few and far between.

Elizabeth suspected Cohen worked the artist scene much like Ryan worked the product market, through virulent monopolization. Both men were captains of industry in their own respects. Cohen consolidated Rapture's talent under his mentorship to avoid competition. The coveted prospect among artist types had become Cohen's sponsorship rather than the chance to challenge the maestro himself. It explained the willing peonage of men like Kyle Fitzpatrick. And when it came to dealing with Sander Cohen, Elizabeth suspected compliance was much safer than defiance.

At the end of the day, the whole arrangement worked in her favor: Cohen's patronage allowed her to insinuate herself into the Fort Frolic social scene. Which, according to Fontaine, included Andrew Ryan.

Every evening, as soon as the afternoon matinees were over, and the lights went on in the Fleet Hall, Elizabeth was at the microphone. She upheld her end of her agreement with Cohen; she sang the words she didn't believe, smiled a smile that didn't quite reach her eyes, and afterwards, allowed herself to be paraded before Rapture's social elite. In a few short days, Elizabeth had perfected a persona of short, polite laughter and small talk. But Cohen's promise to her in Mercury Suites was never far from the forefront of her thoughts. Quid pro quo, he had said, and Elizabeth had every intention of collecting.

"Kyle," Elizabeth caught up to Fitzpatrick as he prepared the stage for that night's performance, "where's Cohen?"

Elizabeth wore a slim black dress and elbow-length gloves, the same costume plastered across posters and show bills throughout Rapture. She had consented to the gloves to hide her pinky finger, but she continued to wear her brooch on a lace choker; Elizabeth refused to part with it. It reminded her of what was important.

Fitzpatrick looked towards the projection booth. "He's should be up there, prepping."

"Preening, you mean," retorted Martin Finnegan. "The old fruit's probably in front of a mirror cleaning his feathers."

Finnegan was another of Cohen's disciples. Like Silas Cobb, his eyes were glassy and yellow from oversplicing. His eyebrows were dusted in frost. Even under the stage lights, he shivered.

When he wasn't haunting Sinclair Spirits, Finnegan managed the tableau and sculpture exhibitions in Poseidon Plaza. Elizabeth never saw much of him; according to rumors and hearsay, several months ago, something terrible had happened in Eve's Garden, the strip club on Finnegan's turf. Cohen had restricted access the plaza after the incident, and Finnegan had become the unofficial gatekeeper.

No one spoke of what had happened in Eve's Garden. Elizabeth had asked Kyle Fitzpatrick about it, and he had promptly changed the subject.

As Finnegan swayed across the stage, Fitzpatrick shifted uncomfortably. "You shouldn't say stuff like that about Sander, Marty. You'll likely get the both of us scratched. He's very touchy about––"

"Yeah, I get it, I get it." Finnegan's breath fogged. "Vanity's his favorite sin, but it's what pays our rent." When he looked at Elizabeth, his choleraic eyes lingered. "Though I suspect you're earning your keep in more ways than one, eh? Nice dress."

"Pipe down, Marty. Elizabeth and Sander have an understanding. You know that." Fitzpatrick shook his head. "You know, over since… ever since––"

Finnegan sneered. "What, boy? Ever since that whore in Eve's Garden handed in her dinner pail?"

The other man flinched. "Yes, since _that_ … well, you've grown so cynical."

"I ain't cynical. I'm _cold_. It's chillier than a welldigger's ass down here. Hard to be cheery about anything when each time you take a piss you feel like you're going to freeze your––"

"If you're quite finished, Finnegan," Elizabeth interrupted, "I really must speak to Cohen."

"While you're at it, Lizzie, tell Cohen the tunnel to Poseidon is frozen over again! Tell him to get McDonagh's limey ass down there and fix it."

"I think you'll find that's _your_ doing, Marty," Fitzpatrick said, "not the seawater. New plasmid?"

"New gene tonics, you nosy potato eater. Sander likes my project proposal for permanent ice tableaus. Thinks it'll _capture what is, as it is._ " Finnegan couldn't resist a jab: "And he must like my idea better than your tickling the ivories… I don't see _you_ with any new genetic gear."

"That's because Sander recognizes that my genius needs no augmentation!"

Elizabeth left the two men to their bickering. She took the Fleet Hall elevator to the balcony seating. The projection booth was set above the private boxes, in the middle of a third-floor corridor running the length of the theater. As she approached, Elizabeth could hear film reels spinning in the projector. She also heard the voice of Sander Cohen, underneath the clatter of machinery. Elizabeth pressed her ear to the door; the tape of an accu-vox recorder clicked as it turned…

 _"… delicious little scrape the old bear's backed himself into."_ Cohen said into his audio diary, _"Acquiring that bald buck's assets would be a feather in Ryan's cap, make no mistake, but it'd be a decidedly ill-becoming disfigurement of his public image. Nationalization may as well be a naughty word down here. Everyone's already parroting on about those danglers in Apollo Square. And now the noose is tightening around Fontaine and his little fiefdom, and when the bottom drops out, an enterprising personage might stand to gain. Yes… there are benefits to buying a stake in Fontaine's pinko establishments. And though critics may take me to task for my humanitarian work, if I am not there to find a home for those orphans, would Anna Culpepper and her bellyachers take my place?"_

Elizabeth hurried past the projection booth, her heartbeat pulsing in her ears. She was so focused on slipping past Cohen that she nearly ran into the man coming from the opposite end of the corridor.

"I seen you on the stage, haven't I? You sang like a bona fide meadowlark, my girl. It's Elizabeth, am I right?"

Elizabeth looked up into the face of a tall, rotund man in a well-tailored suit. He had a deep Southern accent; South Carolina or Georgia, Elizabeth guessed. But the man's smile looked forced, almost as though it had been stapled to his face. He seemed the sort of person to play his confidences close to his barreled chest.

… _I came to Georgia to strike it rich, and Rapture all the moreso… you won't catch me blowin' my last bubble for any other personage… plural or singular…_

"You have me at a disadvantage."

The man stuck out his hand; Elizabeth took it, and he kissed hers. "Augustus Sinclair, Esquire. I don't expect you'll have heard of me, ma'am."

"On the contrary, Mr. Sinclair, your reputation precedes you. Sinclair Solutions… The Sinclair Deluxe," Elizabeth remembered Finnegan, "and Sinclair Spirits in Poseidon Plaza. You're a prolific businessman."

"Just whittling nickels until I make a mint," Sinclair said modestly. He cleared his throat. "Was I interrupting yourself and Mr. Cohen just now?"

"No, but I was on my way up to see him." Before Sinclair could ask why, if that were the case, she was walking _away_ from the projection booth, Elizabeth asked, "Did you need to speak to Cohen yourself? I can come back later..."

"It's just some quick business, my girl. Now, we can't all be charming the birds from the trees like you, and a fella like me got to use other means to revise whatever God gave him."

"Talent is a pursued interest, Mr. Sinclair. And if you don't mind my saying, I was under the impression that God was dead in Rapture."

Sinclair laughed. "Ah, that's old Andy Ryan talking. God ain't so hard a sell down here in this little fishbowl. There's no better bluff with the hard-luck crowd than naming the prime mover as your silent partner, now is there?"

"I suppose not."

"Rapture's a high-stakes town, full of gods wearing suits and dinner jackets, Miss Elizabeth. And Andy Ryan, I figure he reckons the free market's some kind of holy spirit in of itself."

"Do you believe that, Mr. Sinclair?"

He looked at her for a long while. Even with the Doors, Elizabeth couldn't tell what Sinclair was thinking. He was a shark and a swindler, she could see that much, but unlike Frank Fontaine, his good conscience hadn't been completely crushed by the ocean pressure.

"I reckon that if you do business as long as I have, you learn to pick a brand name from the writing on the wall. Betting against a vision of harmony don't mean you don't believe in it. And if you don't mind _my_ saying, Miss Elizabeth," Sinclair changed the subject tactfully, "even in a place like Rapture, it's quite something to meet a young duchess like yourself concerned with the business interests of a fella like me. Acumen seems to be a particular virtue of yours, along with your lovely singing."

"Virtues are acquired through endeavor, which rests wholly upon oneself."

"Well-quoted, my girl. You read Lanier?"

"I read many things."

Sinclair looked genuinely pleased. "That's a fine thing to hear, Miss Elizabeth. So little of civilized folk left in Rapture. Many of the old scribblers once had respectable names… but only God remembers what they are now."

Elizabeth didn't have anything to say to that. Augustus Sinclair suddenly seemed very sad. Elizabeth didn't want to trust him, but she could see iterations of his future behind the Doors, and she couldn't help but feel dreadfully sorry for him. Regardless of his past actions, Sinclair didn't deserve what Rapture had in store for him.

… _wish there was… another way… but I'd rather die a man than live like_ _this_ _…_

"Augustus! Are you being a bore to my dear Elizabeth?"

Sinclair's smile tightened. "Not at all, Mr. Cohen. Just yacking."

"Epizootics of the blowhole, I shouldn't wonder." Elizabeth felt Cohen close at her back. He rested a hand on her shoulder, and Elizabeth fought the urge to slap it away. Fortunately, Sinclair seemed to sense her discomfort.

"Don't be doing us a disservice now, Sander. You've got quite the little Renaissance gal here. I reckon she'll keep you and the rest of this frolic den on their toes."

"You are a repertoire of timely ripostes, Augustus, as usual," Cohen's jocularity sounded slightly strained, "but I trust you have business of a more private nature to discuss…"

"That I do, Mr. Cohen." Sinclair took Elizabeth's hand. "If you'll pardon us, my girl."

She nodded. "Of course."

"You keep on reading, Miss Elizabeth. And you keep on crooning. Rapture needs a little beauty that didn't come out from under Steinman's scalpel or out of one a' Frankie Fontaine's bottles." Sinclair smiled warmly. "Look after yourself, you hear?"

Elizabeth returned the smile. When Sinclair and Cohen were inside the projection booth, and the door pulled closed, her expression hardened, and her smile disappeared.

"That's the problem with this city, Mr. Sinclair," Elizabeth murmured: "people looking after themselves."

She took the stairs to the theater lobby, where Fitzpatrick was stocking the cash registers. Silas Cobb sat in the corner, tracing the patterns on the wallpaper, lost in what little remained of his thoughts. Elizabeth hurried over to Fitzpatrick.

"Kyle, do you know a man named Waldemar Noble? Short, thin, rattish?"

Fitzpatrick frowned. "Yes… he's that paparazzi sneak, isn't he? Oh hell, if he's poking his nose around here, Sander will have a conniption. We could get Cobb to look…"

Silas Cobb started at the mention of his name. So he did remember it, thought Elizabeth.

"Is that slimy twat sniffing into Sander's business again?" Cobb asked haggardly. "I'll shove that fucking camera so far up his ass he'll be taking pictures of his lunch…"

"No," Elizabeth corrected, "but I need to find him, or at least his prints."

"What for?" asked Fitzpatrick.

She hesitated. Fitzpatrick had been kind to her… but so had Comstock, after a fashion. Elizabeth was loath to trust anyone, much less one of Cohen's disciples. "I have reason to believe he may have taken… inappropriate photographs."

"Of you?"

"I didn't say that. But it's important I find Mr. Noble."

"Noble's no friend of Sander Cohen… or any other decent person in Rapture, for that matter."

Elizabeth didn't think Cohen was in any way, shape, or form a decent person, but she didn't dare say that out loud. "But do you know where to find him?"

"Well," Fitzpatrick thought for a moment, "there's a rumor going around that something big'll be happening down by Port Neptune in the next couple of days… very soon, we think. If I had to put my Ryan dollars on it, I'd say Mr. Noble is over at the Fighting McDonagh's with all the other ink slingers, waiting for a scoop to wash up."

When Elizabeth smiled, it was genuine. "Thank you, Kyle." She turned to leave.

"Wait!"

"What?"

"Elizabeth, Port Neptune is on the other side of Rapture. If you're late for your performance tonight…" Fitzpatrick left the rest unsaid. Elizabeth was aware of Silas Cobb snapping his fingers in the corner, tiny sparks jumping between his fingertips. An empty EVE syringe lay at his feet.

"Cohen won't even know I'm gone," Elizabeth assured him.

When she arrived at the Fort Frolic metro station, Elizabeth realized that she had sounded like she was trying to convince herself rather than Kyle Fitzpatrick. If the show doors opened and she wasn't at the microphone, Cohen wouldn't keep her around long enough for her to regret her mistake.

Fortunately, there was an empty bathysphere in the station, and the ocean currents were calm during the journey from Fort Frolic to the piers. Neptune's Bounty was Rapture's largest fishery complex; a vast majority of the city's trawling and angling businesses were located along the wharfs. One of the businesses, Elizabeth hadn't failed to note, was Fontaine Fisheries, which she knew served as a cover for Fontaine's illegal smuggling operations.

When the bathysphere docked at Pier Four on the lower wharf, Port Neptune was crawling with members of the Rapture Port Authority. Fishermen eyed the officers warily as they overturned boxes and crates in the search for contraband goods. The tension was almost palpable, like a rubber band ready to snap.

The Fighting McDonagh's was situated at the end of one of the airtight corridors leading from the upper wharf. The pub had an opulent entrance that lead to the central bar area. Along one curved wall, windows looked out onto the seafloor. Most of the tables were filled with fishermen and members of the Port Authority, and several reporters and journalists trying to keep out of everyone's way. Some of the men were using their plasmids to light cigarettes and chill their beers. There was even an EVE dispensary in one corner of the bar: one syringe for 20 Ryan dollars.

 _… Rapture's changing, but Ryan can't see the wolves in the woods… this Fontaine fellow... he's sinking the profits back into bigger and better plasmids… before we know it, bloke's gonna have an army of splicers, and we're gonna have ourselves a whole heap of miseries…_

Elizabeth spotted Noble almost immediately. He was sitting in one dark corner, trying to remain inconspicuous as he scribbled on his notepad, which somehow made him look even more conspicuous. He scratched another few words before he noticed the young woman sitting across from him.

"Jesus Christ, lady, you about gave me a heart attack!" The paparazzi let out a shaky laugh. Then his eyes adjusted to the light, and he recognized his company. "Oh, crap…"

"Cohen doesn't know I'm here," said Elizabeth softly. "There's a reason Mercury Suites is your favorite stomping ground, Mr. Noble, and I don't think it's exclusively due to the torrid details of Brigid Tenenbaum's private life, or even Frank Fontaine's."

"For fuck's sake, keep your voice down," he whispered. "If one of these Port Authority spooks thinks we're working stiff for Fontaine, we'll swing in Apollo Square!"

"You're always biting at the dirty undersides of this city, so when I tell you that Sander Cohen and Augustus Sinclair have a vested interest in the Little Sisters, you'll know exactly what I'm talking about, correct?"

"I don't want no trouble, lady. Just trying to make a living."

 _"Correct?"_

"Yeah, yeah, sure!" Noble darted his eyes around. Bill McDonagh glanced in their direction, saw the paparazzi, and then went back to wiping beer glasses, shaking his head.

"What have you seen?" Elizabeth demanded.

"Why the fuck should I tell you? You're Cohen's songbird!"

"Because I _am_ working stiff for Frank Fontaine!" Elizabeth snarled, "And let me assure you, if you give him any trouble, it won't be the Port Authority you have to worry about!"

Noble went alabaster white. He stuttered, "Oh shit. Shit shit shit. You're insane. You're off your box." Elizabeth's blue eyes blazed. "Fine, alright, listen: round about every week or whatever, one of them spooks from Sinclair Solutions drops off a large wad of cash near the artist's apartment in Mercury Suites. This is always after Cohen's people take some of them orphans on junkets to the Memorial Museum. Thing is, orphans don't ever come back. Inside skinny says Cohen was keeping those girls for himself, you know, _doing_ things to 'em. But this paparazzi says he's selling 'em out to that fat mack daddy Sinclair, trying to stack some paper."

Elizabeth felt her cheeks reddening. "And you never thought to tell anyone?" she asked angrily.

"Lady, you're a section eight. Sinclair's one of Ryan's guys, see, and Ryan owns the Tribune! I ain't biting the hand that feeds me."

"Oi, miss," Bill McDonagh had wondered over to their table. He had a pleasant, open face framed by large muttonchops, but when he smiled at Elizabeth, Noble stiffened. "Can I get you anything?"

McDonagh was Andrew Ryan's general contractor; Noble wouldn't say another word with him orbiting the table. "No," Elizabeth said, pushing up from her seat, "I was just leaving."

"My wife Elaine and I saw you down at Fort Frolic!" McDonagh beamed. "Loved it, absolutely loved it. Between you, me, and the far wall, you're the best thing to come out of that old treacle tart since he got down here!"

Elizabeth suddenly felt sick. "Thank you," she heard herself saying, "thank you very much, Mr. McDonagh."

Before she heard McDonagh's response, Elizabeth was out of the door, jogging towards the bathysphere dock at Pier Four. And the children were screaming in her ears, and she was crying. And she hated Rapture so much her chest ached.

… _Let me dissolve, let my body and the water meet… down here in Rapture: that's what I am… and I'm going to rush, now, like the ocean, all over…_

And for the first time, Elizabeth forgot about the man named Zachary Comstock.


	8. VIII

September 12th, 1958

 _Audio Transcript – 'Answers'_

 _[I'm a fool. I'm blind, and I'm a fool. It's just as the Luteces have always said, Booker, the answers are always dependent upon the angle of one's perspective. I just needed to look! Cohen's museum tickets… 'A little outing,' he said, but the museum at Point Prometheus has been turned into a proving ground for Dr. Alexander's Protectors, the same Protectors spliced from the inmates of the penal colony owned by Sinclair! And if Cohen's agents are the ones visiting the orphanages, then Fontaine's people have no reason to suspect the treachery. Cohen has an affiliation with Andrew Ryan, that's true, but he has no stake in the plasmid industry. It's a perfect deception: the only man able to steal the Little Sisters is the man who doesn't need them.]_

Kyle Fitzpatrick shifted his weight from foot to foot.

"Elizabeth," he said gently. "I don't think anyone is going to answer that phone."

Elizabeth sighed. She had forwarded a message to Frank Fontaine via the pnuemo line early that morning, outlining her conversation with Wildemar Noble and what little she knew of Cohen's child trafficking racket. The postscript had included a time Elizabeth would be available for a telephone call. But not only had Fontaine failed to acknowledge the message, the telephone operator continued to remind Elizabeth that the lines to Fontaine's Department Store and Fontaine Futuristics had been completely severed. For some inexplicable reason, Frank Fontaine was in a communications blackout.

"He'll pick up," she murmured, not quite believing it herself.

Fitzpatrick knitted his eyebrows. "I thought you said you were using my phone card to call your aunt?"

"She'll pick up."

"Elizabeth…"

The connection clicked, and the line went dead. Elizabeth slammed the phone on its cradle. The stage crew jumped. Fitzpatrick took a wary step back.

Frank Fontaine had spies all over Rapture. In all likelihood, one of them had overheard her conversation with Mr. Noble at the Fighting McDonagh's the previous evening. If Elizabeth had uncovered anything connected to the missing Little Sisters, she anticipated Fontaine being the first to know about it. His silence was bewildering.

She swallowed back her frustration. Every time Elizabeth thought she was one step ahead of the city and its intrigues, she stumbled. Even with the Doors, she felt blind, jumping from one disjointed fragment of the truth to the next. The light was fading, and the path was receding beneath the shadows. And this time, Elizabeth didn't believe the interference was her employer's doing. He was not a man easily silenced, and the prospect of dealing with someone formidable enough to muzzle Fontaine gave Elizabeth significant pause for thought.

"You have a performance in five minutes," Fitzpatrick reminded her. "You made last night's show by the skin of your teeth. Another close call like that and Sander will be displeased."

"Displeased might be too pretty a term."

"My point exactly. Curtain call in five."

Elizabeth brushed a few errant strands of lint from her crimson dress. When she looked at herself in the mirror, the bright-eyed girl from Monument Island wasn't the one looking back at her. There were new lines creasing the corners of her mouth. Her blue eyes looked murky and tired. She felt thin, like a paper person creased and worn at the edges. Elizabeth wondered what Booker would think if he could see her now.

Elizabeth turned away from the mirror. Booker wouldn't think anything. Booker DeWitt was dead, and the dead forfeited their right to any opinion of the living.

"I'm ready," she intoned.

Kyle Fitzpatrick nodded.

The heavy velvet curtain ascended. The stage lights, high above her head in the rafters, illuminated a column of dust motes pirouetting in the air, glittering in tendrils of gold. Elizabeth looked out into the packed Fleet Hall. As her eyes adjusted to the light, she recognized a few faces, including the Luteces, sitting in the front row, watching her expectantly. They had come to every performance, like attentive parents. But as she searched the private theater boxes, she didn't see the clean-shaven man with the amber eyes. Perhaps it had been too much to hope for Frank Fontaine's appearance.

Sander Cohen was saying something to the audience, but Elizabeth wasn't listening. She watched his arms perambulate through the air, his gesticulations and grand theatrical gestures, and she thought he looked like a bird with his wings clipped, trying desperately to flap away.

After the raucous round of applause from the audience, Elizabeth stepped towards the microphone. The pit orchestra began to play…

 _"See the pyramids beyond the Nile… watch the sunrise, from a tropic isle… just remember, darling, all the while… you belong to me…"_

Elizabeth felt her mouth forming the words, heard herself singing, as if from a great distance. She continued to search the audience, jumping between the same patient eyes and the same polite expressions, frozen like porcelain under the light. Mannequins strapped to their seats, held captive by Cohen's art. But then Elizabeth saw someone standing in the back of the theater, near the exit. She struggled to distinguish his features, silhouetted against the open doorway, but she could tell it wasn't Frank Fontaine: too much hair. It was a young man, tall and dark. He rested against the doorframe, the burning nub of a cigarette flashing briefly in the darkness. Her gaze lingered, and the man watched her.

 _"And I'll be so alone without you… Maybe you'll be lonesome, too…"_

Elizabeth felt her stomach lurch, and then the Doors began to open. The rear of the auditorium telescoped closer, pushing across the thresholds of all realities, and the silhouetted man was suddenly enormous, the largest shadow in the universe. He eclipsed the audience and the Fleet Hall, and through him, Elizabeth saw Rapture. She stood at a window, in a room no one would ever find, unless they already knew where to look. And the city burned around her. Currents of boiling water surged against the glass. In one of the buildings, an explosion shattered the outer hull. Fire and water billowed into helixes of bubbles. The lights flickered, and then the world went dark. There was silence. And standing next to Elizabeth was the man, the shadow. He watched Andrew Ryan's city smolder, and he took a drag of his cigarette, and he was happy.

… _he aims to destroy me, I GOT A NEW GODDAMN FACE and to destroy my city RAPTURE, PARADISE OF THE CONFIDENCE MAN to question is to surrender… I will not question…_

 _"Fly the ocean in a silver plane, see the jungle when it's wet with rain… just remember till you're home again… you belong to me…"_

She took a deep breath, and allowed the audience's applause to shutter the Doors. Elizabeth bowed. When she looked up again, the man in the back of the theater was gone.

Elizabeth stepped back as the curtain fell. The pit band began the intermission, and the audience stirred in their seats. Fitzpatrick rushed over to her.

"Kyle," she asked breathlessly, "shouldn't you be on piano for the intermission?"

The young man's face was slick with sweat. He looked alarmingly pale. "Elizabeth… there's a man in the hall who wants to see you."

Elizabeth swallowed. Perhaps the bald crook had shone his face after all. "Who?"

"Some big old Russian spook. I've seen friendlier-looking types. Sander is with him."

Or perhaps not. "I see."

"And they said… well, they emphasized haste. Before the next act."

"Then you had better get outside, Kyle. I'll handle this."

He looked happy to leave her to it. Before he disappeared behind the curtain, he turned to her. "Elizabeth?"

"Yes?"

"Be careful. Please."

Elizabeth nodded. She stepped through the backstage entrance into the service corridor. Standing next to Sander Cohen was a huge man who looked about ready to burst out of his dinner jacket. He had a brutal, scarred face and belligerent eyes. He reminded Elizabeth of Comstock's metal patriots.

"Elizabeth dear," Cohen purred, "this is Mr. Karlosky. His esteemed employer wishes to have a quiet word. In private."

Elizabeth pointedly ignored Cohen. "May I ask who your employer is, Mr. Karlosky?"

"You'll know him," Karlosky said gruffly, but not unkindly. "You ain't in trouble or nothing; boss just wants to meet you. He's waiting for you upstairs."

Elizabeth's instincts told her that she wouldn't have much say in the matter, so she didn't push the issue. But as she started to follow Karlosky to the theater boxes, Cohen grabbed her arm. His grip was unnaturally strong, and when he pulled her close, Elizabeth could see a band of yellow in his hazel eyes. SportsBoost plasmid. Cohen had been splicing.

His powdered face cracked into a dangerous sneer. Beneath the makeup, his skin had already begun to break out in shingled hives.

"If you fuck this up, you recalcitrant little bitch," he snarled, "I'll tear your face off with my teeth!"

Before Elizabeth could bury a knee in Cohen's groin, he shoved her away. She could feel her arm bruising. In the dim hallway, Cohen's eyes glowed yellow, and red light snapped between his fingertips.

Elizabeth hurried after Karlosky. As she climbed the stairs, she felt Cohen's gaze burning into the back of her skull. She heard him, screaming in her ears:

 _… it's my curse! It's my fucking curse! I want to take the ears off! Please! Take them off! Please…_

Elizabeth shivered.

"Hey, miss? Over here."

Karlosky stood outside the executive suite. Two more armed guards were posted on either side of the door, tommy guns held across their chests. They seemed on edge. As the other patrons meandered back to their boxes, the guards peered at them suspiciously. Karlosky pushed past his colleagues and hammered on the door. "She's here, sir."

Elizabeth heard an indistinct reply from inside. Then Karlosky pushed the door open, and gestured for Elizabeth to enter.

The two seats nearest the banister were occupied. In one sat a blond woman with a pinched, myopic face. She fingered her pearl necklace as she stole glances between Elizabeth and her companion, the dark-haired man in the adjacent chair.

Elizabeth stood there awkwardly for a few moments while the man took a measured sip of his martini.

"Diane, my dear," he finally spoke; Elizabeth immediately recognized the voice, "could you spare us a moment?"

"Andrei––"

"Please, do it for me. We shan't be a moment."

A blond woman mumbled something to the affirmative and left her seat. She didn't look at Elizabeth as she passed, continuing to fiddle with her expensive necklace. When the woman was gone, the man in the chair spoke again:

"Sander Cohen's work… doesn't always resound with the general populace, I'm afraid, but his new songbird has been the talk of Rapture. I had to see her for myself." Although Elizabeth couldn't see his face, she could hear his smirk. "I told Sander that if your singing was half as beautiful as you are, than we were in for a treat. "

Elizabeth caught herself rubbing her thimble for the first time in many days. "I'm pleased you enjoyed the performance, Mr. Ryan."

Andrew Ryan looked over his shoulder. Rapture's founder and the chief executive officer of Ryan Industries was a tall, dark man, impeccably groomed and well dressed. He had high cheekbones and a small, neat mustache under an aquiline nose. His eyes were palatine blue, like the ocean. There was something immutable and timeless about him, as though he had stepped from the pages of Shelley's _Ozymandias_. Elizabeth thought Ryan would approve of the comparison. There was little difference, she decided, between the statues and effigies dotting Rapture, and the man sitting two feet in front of her.

"Enjoyed it?" Ryan had a slight Russian accent, well suppressed. When the theater lights reflected off his martini glass, his eyes glinted. "My dear, your talent reminds me of the reason I built Rapture in the first place, so that men and women of your ability could pursue their passions unimpeded by the censor. You embody the most fundamental ideals of this city. Hearing you sing tonight was… an affirmation, as well as a privilege."

"Thank you, Mr. Ryan."

"Please, my dear, have a seat, and call me Andrew."

Elizabeth had absolutely no intention of calling him Andrew, but for the sake of politeness, she sat down in Diane McClintock's empty chair. Below them, Fitzpatrick serenaded the intermission with Cohen's _Scherzo No. 7_. Elizabeth watched his fingers dance across the keyboard.

"You have a lovely view from up here," she noted.

"Sander charges triple for box seats, as he ought to, but I believe the expense is cost effective."

Elizabeth merely nodded. Andrew Ryan procured a cigarette tin and a lighter from his jacket pocket, held them out to her. Elizabeth inclined her head in thanks. Ryan lit her cigarette, and Elizabeth took a long, grateful drag.

Ryan broke the silence after a few moments. "I had another reason for coming to call this evening, my dear, beyond the pleasure of your company."

"To take full advantage of your box seat view for which Cohen charges triple?"

Ryan chuckled. "Touché." Then his smile evaporated. "But… I'm afraid I come bearing bad news, which I thought was best to share with you in person.

"Your employer, Frank Fontaine, is dead. He was shot in Port Neptune early this afternoon."

Elizabeth felt something acrid slither into her lungs, and she wasn't entirely sure it was the cigarette smoke. Her knuckles whitened around the arms of the chair.

"There was a shootout at the Fisheries between my men and several dozen splicers under Fontaine's control. Fontaine himself went out guns blazing, McDonagh assures me." Ryan sipped his martini. "His assets have been confiscated, Fontaine Futuristics condemned, his accounts annulled. Fontaine was the one roach I couldn't seem to exterminate, but all I needed, it seems, was ample time to find the proper poison. So ends all parasites… regardless of their financial affluence."

"How long have you known about me?" murmured Elizabeth.

"Since Morris Lauderman told Yi Suchong about a woman appearing out of thin air in the middle of his restaurant. And as you well know, Dr. Suchong suffers from a distinct lack of discretion. It wasn't difficult for my men to keep tabs on your activities. The employees of Ryan Industries are exceedingly thorough."

"Employees." Elizabeth glowered. "You mean Sinclair."

"You're intuitive. Yes, Augustus Sinclair is what happens when spineless moral relativism is spun into a business ethic. The man has his dirty fingers in each and every pie. But I will admit, his little firm has its uses, tracking you being the least of them."

"Then why not stop me?"

"Because I chose not to. In this city, that is usually enough."

Elizabeth gave a curt laugh. "Your word is law. How positively autocratic."

"You presume to superimpose a conceit of tyranny where none exists. I allowed you to flutter through Rapture because I recognized that spying for Fontaine was not your primary intent. And to be perfectly candid," Ryan put his martini down and turned to face her, making eye contact for the first time, "you intrigue me, Elizabeth. I think you are, perhaps, the most exceptional person in my city this evening. You outfoxed Fontaine, which, frankly, does not happen. You showed no interest in his politics or his money. The logical conclusion of course is that you are pursuing your own objective in Rapture, one that supersedes Fontaine's interests as well as a concern for your own welfare. And I doubt that objective is your estimable singing career."

"Do you expect me to tell you why I'm really here, in Rapture?"

"I _have_ spared you Fontaine's fate at the hands of Ryan Security."

"Altruism, Mr. Ryan?"

"Don't insult me. Rapture is founded upon the principles of free enterprise, free trade. I merely expect a fair exchange for services rendered. I have allowed you your liberty, and in turn, I expect you to tell me what I want to know. After all," Ryan allowed himself a thin smile, "it's not as though you have a great many alternatives."

Elizabeth tapped ash from the tip of her cigarette. "What _do_ you want to know?"

"You were tasked with locating Fontaine's missing moppets. Going by the audio diary transcription Sinclair intercepted on the pneumo line, I take it you have succeeded?"

"You ought to know. It was Sinclair and Cohen, abducting the children to provide test subjects for Gilbert Alexander's Protector program. On your dime, I might add."

"Business, my dear, and an out-of-pocket expense I was willing to pay in order to close the books on Fontaine's little empire. And with that arrogant rascal counting the maggots, you ought to be left with a vacuum of purpose… and yet you are not. You have an agenda of your own. Why are you really here?"

Elizabeth smiled enigmatically. "I deal in debt settlement. As you said, Mr. Ryan, there ought to be an exchange for services rendered. I'm just here to collect."

"From whom?"

"The man's name is Zachary Comstock."

"And what is he to you? More than a client, I suspect, if Sinclair's reports are to be believed, which they invariably are."

Elizabeth looked away from Ryan. She could still feel him staring at her; for some reason, she was willing to be forthright with him. There was something about his demeanor that brooked no pretense. Elizabeth had no doubt that Andrew Ryan could recognize a deception as easily as Frank Fontaine could craft one.

"Comstock is my father," she said softly.

Ryan nodded. "Well, Miss Comstock, that puts you in a rather difficult position."

"Enlighten me."

"There is no one in Rapture named Zachary Comstock. I should know; I issue the housing contracts. Either you are lying to me, which I find unlikely, or you have been misled, and I am far too well acquainted with the vicissitudes of genius to believe you would allow yourself to be conned. You are looking for a man who does not exist."

"But Cohen said––"

"Sander Cohen said what you wanted to hear. Much as you said what Frank Fontaine wanted to hear, as I understand it." Ryan swirled a toothpick around the rim of his glass. "Recurrence, eh? Circles. Those who do not learn their lessons from history are doomed to repeat it."

"Spirals."

"I beg your pardon?"

"Spirals," snapped Elizabeth. "Not circles. Comstock is here. I understand that you and the truth aren't always on speaking terms, Mr. Ryan, but I have it on extremely good authority that my father is in this city. I am going to find him, even if I have to tear your precious Rapture apart. And in the meantime, let's see if I can't rattle this Great Chain of yours, unsettle Cohen's child trafficking scheme."

Ryan frowned. Exceptional or not, she tried his patience. Perhaps it wasn't strictly in line with his philosophy to shoot the girl, but it would save him quite a bit of trouble if she decided to interfere.

"I could stop you, my dear."

 _… a few stretched necks are a small price to pay for our ideals…_

"As you so delight in reminding people, you don't have the authority. No gods or kings, Mr. Ryan," Elizabeth said derisively, "only man."

"Although the Great Chain is too powerful and too mysterious for any government to guide, we have ordinances in place for dealing with quislings, and I will not permit your interfering with Sander Cohen's business interests."

"He's selling children!"

"Orphans. Waywards. Creatures who would otherwise offer no meaningful contribution to society. I will admit that Frank Fontaine showed some foresight when he built up his plasmid business, but the man never truly understood marketing. He hid the girls in his orphanages and stuck the ADAM in filthy needles. Dispensation is tantamount to administrating narcotics. I have discussed some preliminary designs for plasmid machines with Yi Suchong, and they're exactly what Rapture needs. Presented properly, those Little Sisters are marketing gold."

"If you're intending to affect a change in plasmid distribution, then that means…" Realization hit Elizabeth like a kick in the teeth; she remembered Cohen's audio diary from the previous evening, "you're planning to requisition the plasmid market. You are going to nationalize Fontaine Futuristics."

Andrew Ryan's expression was inscrutable. "It is unfortunate that such measures had to be taken… unfortunate, but necessary. Fontaine's enterprises were endangering the city. His plasmids are on the market now. I cannot pull the Great Chain from its appointed course. But I can bring it under the purview of the city, for the good of Rapture." Ryan took a deep breath. "Lamb is gone… and now Fontaine. I am finally alone."

The cigarette was beginning to make Elizabeth feel thin and cold. She felt the smoke slithering down her throat, gray and glutinous. She struggled to steady her shaking hands.

"I once knew a girl," Elizabeth said quietly, "who was taken from her rightful family, literally torn from them. Ripped apart. She was locked away in an unfamiliar place, away from all the light and life of the outside world, and in her prison, she was completely alone. Like yourself, Mr. Ryan, the girl's captors recognized her value: she was an investment for which they had paid a very high price. So they conducted experiments on her. They chained her. They changed her. And they pulled her in so many different directions that they tore a hole inside her, a singularity that went deeper than one single stratum of time and space. They created something they didn't fully understand."

Ryan looked almost charmed. "Is this your attempt at upbraiding me, Miss Comstock? With Tenenbaum and Suchong now under contract with Ryan Industries, I shan't think the Little Sisters will pose much of an intellectual mare's nest for us."

"The girl's captors thought they were creating a weapon, Mr. Ryan," Elizabeth crushed her cigarette in the ashtray, watched the cinders burn, "instead, they created God."

"I believe in no tribal fetishes, no invisible man in the sky. There is no God in Rapture."

"There is, Mr. Ryan. He wears a nice suit and frequents Eve's Garden when His secretary doesn't quite turn the trick."

Ryan bristled. Elizabeth had struck a nerve.

"Perhaps Fontaine _was_ a worm looking into the face of God. Perhaps you are right. After all, you've seen them, Miss Comstock, in the ports, in the stinking mire…" Ryan sneered, "That scoundrel's hanger-ons are a regular convention of worms! They all have mothers, fathers, people who love them. They get married, fuck their wives. What makes you think you are any different? You know nothing of this city, its people!"

"I know enough!" snapped Elizabeth. "You destroy those who oppose you and you change nothing, because they are not the problem. Perhaps Fontaine wasn't some brilliant businessman or fifth columnist, inciting the people against you… perhaps the people just didn't like Andrew Ryan very much. This Eden has a snake, Great Man, and every time you cut off one of its heads, another will grow in its place."

"Unless I were to burn the nubbin, cut out the lesion and bury it where no one would ever find it. Bury it, and salt the earth."

Elizabeth felt a sudden surge of anger. "Just like you did to that girl in Eve's Garden?"

She saw the blood rising in his face. "I loaned you the right to draw breath in my city _… and I can revoke it with a word._ "

"By all means, Mr. Ryan," Elizabeth smiled dangerously, "lock me in Persephone. Hang me from the scaffold in Apollo Square. Prove me right."

For a moment, she thought Ryan was going to crush his martini glass in his fist… or dash it across her face. But Elizabeth was not afraid. She had been afraid of Frank Fontaine, of Sander Cohen, of the shadow at the back of the Fleet Hall; she would waste no more fear on the men of Rapture, least of all a vindictive hypocrite who silenced what he could not control, who valued a leaking city above the people living in it.

Abruptly, the pressure diffused, and Andrew Ryan seemed to relax. He hid his simmering anger behind an easy smile. "You're not one of Fontaine's parasites," he said softly. "You're not one of Lamb's collectivists. You're just astoundingly naive. Has it ever occurred to you, my dear, that I am not the one standing apart from his fellow man? You apportion your own isolation to the shoulders of men like me in an attempt to ease your burden. For all your intelligence, all your spirit, you are completely alone. I have my city, Miss Comstock. What do you have?"

Elizabeth didn't answer him right away. Instead, she stared at the adjacent chair, and as the light rippled across the palls of dust, a Door cracked open, and Elizabeth peeked behind it. Where Andrew Ryan was sitting, she saw a weatherbeaten man with brown, unruly hair and blue eyes the color of a cloudless sky. His face was coarse and unshaven, his clothes rumpled, his shirt untucked. He sat above the Fleet Hall and strummed his guitar, hummed a song Elizabeth recognized for a fleeting moment, and then forgot just as quickly. He didn't say anything, but he looked at her and smiled a small, sad smile that nearly broke her heart.

"A promise, Mr. Ryan. I have my promise."

Andrew Ryan nodded. Her answer seemed to satisfy him; promises and contracts were things Ryan weighed heavily. His temper in check, he was back to his polite, genial self.

Elizabeth sighed. "So, what happens now?"

"That, my dear, is entirely your decision." He knitted his hands together; his expression turned meditative. "But if I may offer a suggestion?"

"You may."

"Stay here. Forget this futile vendetta against Cohen. Don't waste your time searching for a man who does not exist. Sing. Read your books. Pursue the knowledge I know you hunger for. Rapture could be your city… and if you so desired it," he looked at her again, and his gaze lingered, "I could be your patron." Faced with Elizabeth's silence, he continued, "We could inaugurate an era of discovery, of intellectualism, that would last forever… unwithering, undying, unhindered by law and God. A tribute to this new world we will have created together."

"Forever…" Elizabeth almost laughed. "Do you know the measure of eternity, Mr. Ryan? I do. Time isn't linear. Time is fractal, and I can see iterations of infinity where you do not exist, where Rapture naught but ash and dust, and even those left to remember your great city are long gone. You have already failed."

Elizabeth rose from her seat. Andrew Ryan rose with her.

"Thank you for the cigarette, Mr. Ryan. I hope the worms don't stain your boots."

She turned to go. Karlosky opened the door for her. In the Fleet Hall, Kyle Fitzpatrick finished his serenade, and Andrew Ryan finished his martini.


	9. IX

October 13th, 1958

 _Audio Transcript – 'Why?'_

 _[One month has passed. With Fontaine dead, I had hoped Andrew Ryan would recognize the destructiveness of the plasmid market and halt production. He would break up Fontaine Futuristics, lift the restrictions on smuggling, suspend capital punishment. Things would return to normal. If anything, Ryan's newfound autonomy has turned him brazen. He has nationalized Fontaine's investments, introduced a whole new line of plasmids. There are gene banks and ADAM dispensaries on every street corner. Moreover, Ryan hasn't freed the Little Sisters. Now the girls patrol the streets with their new armored escorts, drawing ADAM from the dead. Rapture is no longer a city; it's a feeding ground. Booker, could the Luteces be wrong? Why would Comstock be here? Why would anyone want to come to this place?]_

"Why has the tram stopped?"

The security guard had the good grace to look apologetic. "I'm sorry, miss, no entrance past this point. Andrew Ryan's orders."

Elizabeth frowned. "I need to reach Mercury Suites."

"Unless I can see your residency pass, miss, we're not letting anyone back there at the moment. We're trying to cordon off Olympus Heights."

"I'm visiting someone… Brigid Tenenbaum. I don't live there myself."

"Tenenbaum? You mean that Kraut scientist who's gone missing?"

"Yes." Elizabeth was one of many to notice Tenenbaum's recent withdrawal from the public eye. Ryan had tried to cover it up, claiming she was working on her next great innovation for Ryan Industries. But Fontaine had been dead for a month, and there was no sign of Brigid Tenenbaum. Elizabeth had her suspicions, though she kept them to herself. "It's urgent that I speak with her."

"Even if I did let you in, I don't think you'd find her. No one's seen her since Fontaine went tits up, begging your pardon." The man furrowed his eyebrows. "Why're you so desperate to find her, anyhow?"

Because even with Fontaine gone and the economic competition over and done, the Little Sisters are still disappearing, Elizabeth thought to herself.

After Ryan Industries seized what remained of Fontaine's assets, the girls in the orphanages were left to fend for themselves. Those who weren't killed by rogue splicers or picked up by Cohen's trafficking ring –– now working independently from Sinclair Solutions –– were brought to Andrew Ryan's educational facilities. Elizabeth suspected the schools were fronts for Little Sister conversion centers. With plasmids and gene tonics still on the market, the citizens of Rapture needed their ADAM, and so Ryan needed the Little Sisters. But many of the girls had vanished, and with them, Brigid Tenenbaum herself. Elizabeth couldn't help but wonder if the former confederate of the late Frank Fontaine had had a sudden prick of conscience. And if Tenenbaum was working to free the Little Sisters, then perhaps Elizabeth had an ally in her campaign to close the books on Cohen's trafficking racket.

"Tenenbaum and I have a debt to settle," Elizabeth finally said.

"I still can't let you in, miss. I'm sorry, it's for your own safety."

Elizabeth stuck her head outside the tram. She could hear fires burning, and somewhere, a man shouting; his words were unintelligible under the cries of distant spectators. "What's going on out there?"

"That Fumblin' Dublin's stirring up trouble again." The young man harrumphed. "Down in Apollo Square… he's got quite a bit of a following now, so says the word on the street."

"Who?"

"You know… Atlas."

Elizabeth felt auric flashes behind her eyeballs, a sudden stabbing headache. "Atlas?"

"Yeah. When Ryan nationalized Fontaine Futuristics, that Irish bastard protested against him… in front of the whole damn citizenry. With Fontaine joining the great majority, Atlas's been using the old crook's poor houses to build up supporters against Ryan. Those hooligans have made Hestia Chambers in Apollo Square their headquarters, and every time Atlas so much as takes a shit we got to be out here making sure he ain't shitting on Ryan's effigy or something."

 _… I'm not a liberator… Liberators do not exist… these people will liberate themselves… faces within faces… a mask, a man… spirals…_

Elizabeth blinked rapidly, trying to clear a sudden wave of nausea. "In Apollo Square?"

"Yeah."

"I'd like to see him, if you wouldn't mind." Elizabeth flashed her brightest smile. "Professional curiosity."

"I do mind, actually, miss. If Sullivan found out I was letting people past here, he'd have my badge."

Elizabeth took out a roll of Ryan dollars, the last of her allowance from Fontaine. "An exchange, my friend. I've been lead to believe that the business of Rapture is business."

"Don't go flashing that around!" he hissed, but he took the money anyway. "Just under those arches there. You can't miss it; just follow the shouting and the fires."

"Thank you," said Elizabeth, meaning it. She disembarked, and stepped through the bulkhead to Apollo Square.

The wounds of Ryan's war against the smugglers were still fresh. Off the main, the metro system trolley had been completely destroyed. The sea had begun to reclaim that corner of Rapture. The aluminum hull was dented, the windows cracked and leaking. Live wires dangled from the ceiling, their exposed insides flashing in the stagnant water. Elizabeth was careful to step around the puddles as she entered Apollo Square. Inside, the entire residential area was in ruins. Fires burned in rubbish tips and trashcans. Pictures of missing people adorned the walls. Elizabeth could smell the bloated, necrotic bodies, left to rot from the makeshift scaffolds in the square. It was barbarism at its most primitive and degenerate, thriving in one dark margin of utopia.

The top two floors of Fontaine's Home for the Poor in Hestia Chambers had been converted into a command center. Ryan security had erected barricades around the building. Many of them had guns trained on the destitute men and women trapped inside. On one high balcony was the man Elizabeth had heard shouting while she was aboard the tram in Olympus Heights…

And it was the same man from the back of the Fleet Hall. Elizabeth was sure of it.

 _… faces within faces…_

He was tall, dark-haired, exceptionally handsome, dressed in the slacks and braces of the Rapture working class. His easy smile exuded charisma. When he began to speak, everyone paid attention, even Ryan's security detail.

"Andrew Ryan's playing us for saps!" he bellowed in his Dublin brogue, "If you go to the Rapture Council, you'll find those suits and ties, those dossers, those misrepresentatives of the masses claiming, with their fine words and pretty talk, that they have risen from the ranks to their places of eminence. And Ryan… that bastard'd live in your ear and sublet your eardrum! That's how _they_ make their way! I am very proud that I cannot make that claim for myself!" The crowd roared their approval. "I'd be ashamed to admit that I had risen from the ranks. When I rise, it will be _with_ the ranks!"

Elizabeth was impressed, even though his speech was anything but original. The words were a spliced patchwork of union rhetoric from any number of places, from the writings of Clarence Darrow to the campaign speeches of Eugene V. Debs. But it didn't matter what Atlas was saying; the passion he instilled in people made them believe every word. Andrew Ryan knew how to elucidate, but Atlas knew how to inspire.

"You've all had a taste of Andrew Ryan's promise of _opportunity_." Atlas gestured to the ruins of Apollo Square, barred his white, white teeth. "He's the one who built this place, and he's the one who's gonna run it into the ground. He's made a holy show of Rapture! Maybe he ain't quite the full shilling anymore." Elizabeth felt the security officers stiffen. "Maybe the power's got to him. Maybe he's just decided he don't like people. Whichever way you slice it, boyo, good men are dead and dying. It's time to either run the table or go home empty. Are we gonna stand for it?"

Elizabeth didn't hear the response under the shouting. Atlas' followers began to bang basin wrenches and pipes against corrugated sheets; the sound reverberated through the square like metallic thunder. Some people began to throw things at Ryan security: rocks and rubble, empty bullet casings. Atlas was stirring the crowd into a frenzy, and the security officers were growing restless.

"Alright!" bellowed a large man in uniform; Elizabeth recognized the Brooklyn accent of Security Chief Sullivan. "Alright, break it up, go home, go home, you know the rules, no public gatherings above four people. Come on, move it…"

Atlas sneered. He crowed from the balcony, "You can shut us out but you can't shut us up, boyo! Ryan's lot are awful wasters altogether, aren't they lads?"

"Keep your damn mouth shut, you fucking leprechaun!" screamed one of Sullivan's lieutenants. Atlas' people didn't like that very much. A couple of splicers in Hestia Chambers began to throw fireballs, dispersing the security officers.

Elizabeth elbowed her way through the crowd. With so much chaos, no one noticed her. She spotted a familiar face at the edge of Atlas' gang, hovering near the security perimeter.

"Samantha!" called Elizabeth. Samantha Kemp started at the mention of her name.

"I don't believe it," the young woman murmured, "that's you, ain't it, from the bathysphere station? Jesus, what the hell're you doing down here?"

"I could say the same." Then it occurred to Elizabeth. "Fontaine… you lost your job."

Samantha's face twisted in anger. She spat, "And more besides. After Fontaine was dead and buried, they killed my baby… Those fucking lunatics, Ryan's Houdini splicers, full of their fucking ADAM, came into Artemis Chambers looking for contraband and murdered my boy. I don't got anything left but the fight, and I'll see Ryan dangle if it's the last thing I do. Atlas is promising us something better. He says we don't got to live like slaves! We don't got to die like my boy died!"

Elizabeth's chest ached. "But Apollo Square… you can't stay here. Ryan is shutting down the bathyspheres and the trolleys, cordoning off Olympus Heights. You'll be trapped."

"You ain't in the know," Samantha smirked mirthlessly, "soon, Atlas'll be moving us to Fontaine's old department store… all sorts a' supplies and munitions left over from that bald bastard's time. We're blowing this fucking wasteland." Samantha began to move with Atlas' crowd, receding back into the poorhouse. She paused. "Come with us."

Elizabeth didn't move. "I can't. There's something I have to do, Samantha. I have business with Ryan."

"Hun, everyone's got their bone to pick with Andrew Ryan. Why don't you join us… we'll hold his head, and Atlas'll hold the knife."

"Because," Elizabeth looked up to the balcony, where Atlas stood, arms crossed, surveying the chaos; her words seemed to come from very far away, "I am owed more than this."

 _… or die with Atlas…_

Samantha shrugged at the cryptic answer. "Suit yourself," then she gave Elizabeth a little wave, "maybe when we meet again, it'll be in a better Rapture, huh?"

Elizabeth returned the wave. But she knew she would never see Samantha Kemp again.

Ryan's security detail was regrouping from the splicer attacks. Some of them had brought chemical throwers and grenade launchers. Before Sullivan set the entire square on fire, Elizabeth retreated to the metro line adjacent to Hestia Chambers. The guards were only too happy to let her pass; they were eager to clear the square.

Elizabeth was the only one on the trolley when it began to trundle back to the bathysphere station. When she was sure she was alone, she smiled.

"Why are you so happy?"

Elizabeth turned to Rosalind Lutece, grinning. "I've just had an idea."

"Oh?" Robert Lutece lowered his newspaper; the headline read: _Atlas' Parasites Driven from Point Prometheus_. "Do tell."

"The department store."

"What about the department store?"

"What Samantha Kemp said… if Atlas is moving his followers to Fontaine's, then it stands to reason that the department store is appositely sequestered from the rest of Rapture, somewhere dark and dusty where Ryan won't think to look for them. It's been a month since the Council seized the building, and nothing has become of it. It's just sitting there."

"I assume you have a point, but what that point may be heretofore eludes me."

"Atlas and his gang aren't the only ones who need somewhere to lay low." Elizabeth made a beeline for the bathysphere. Once inside, she set the coordinates for Fort Frolic. "Fontaine's Department Store is huge; there are a hundred places to hide a large number of adults… or a large number of children, should the need arise."

"Ah. You believe the estimable Brigid Tenenbaum has taken up residence."

"If I can get into Fontaine's, if Tenenbaum and I pooled our resources, then we might be able to put a stop to Cohen's child trafficking ring, maybe the entire Little Sister conversion program!"

"That's provided Tenenbaum has, indeed, gone rogue, and is not simply holed up in her laboratory quietly minding her own business."

"As Andrew Ryan claims. Irregardless of your opinion of the man, he values his business associates."

"Now _Atlas_ on the other hand…"

Elizabeth faced the Luteces. "What about him?"

"You tell us."

"There are Doors… but I can't see anything behind them. Just… darkness. Shadows."

"Hmm. Interesting man."

"Though there's little to like in him, one must admire the lilt in his brogue."

"I do commend this recent effort of yours to find the good in people, sister."

"Sadly, brother, it's all a lie."

"The effort?"

"The accent."

"I don't suppose there's much about the man that's authentic."

"He's authentically homicidal."

Elizabeth shook her head. "You're mistaken… Atlas is trying to help the people of Rapture, the same people Ryan and Fontaine abandoned to the wayside. Look at Samantha Kemp. She had nothing. Now, at least, she has a little hope."

 _Hopes, much like quantum superpositions, have a tendency to collapse._

"At any rate," the bathysphere docked; Elizabeth navigated the atrium towards the Fleet Hall, "Atlas is my way of reaching Brigid Tenenbaum. With her help, I can save those children. I just need to reach the department store."

"Miss Comstock…" Rosalind Lutece hesitated for a moment; both Elizabeth and Robert looked surprised: "When I met your father, he was little more than a preacher, but he believed in my work, and his influence bought the funds I needed. Much as Fontaine, and later Ryan, did for Tenenbaum and Suchong. And if my patron wanted to use Tears to play prophet, then that was his prerogative. But at some point, the man became incapable of distinguishing his performance from his person."

"At the risk of sounding redundant, Madame Lutece, I assume you have a point…?"

"When does porcelain turn to flesh? Masks, after a time, become difficult to remove."

Elizabeth laughed disparagingly. "I have been here for nearly three months. In that time, I have found absolutely zero evidence of Comstock having lived in this city! Yes, finding those girls for Fontaine started out as a front, but my time is much better spent affecting a change for positive good than running around on a wild goose chase!"

"Selfless of you," said Robert.

"But silly," countered Rosalind. "Consider: what phenomenon occurs when there is a straight-line configuration of celestial bodies in a gravitational system? When the moon blots out the sun?"

"Eclipses," answered Elizabeth. "Shadows."

Andrew Ryan, Frank Fontaine, and now Atlas… they were all masses in orbit around each other, aligned in perfect symmetry commensurate with the laws of gravity and time. When their paths intersected, there was darkness. Eclipse. If Elizabeth crossed any of them, if another celestial body was added to the gravitational system, then she would create a very large shadow indeed.

"I don't care," Elizabeth decided. Saying the words felt remarkably liberating. "Vengeance and mercy are superpositive forces, Madame Lutece. If we are all set on some inexorable trajectory through all the endless worlds, all the infinite possibilities, then how can there be a real difference between forgiveness and reprisal? What if, under everything, even under the skin of reality, it's simple regret that distinguishes one world from another?" Elizabeth touched the brooch at her neck. "I can still feel it, you know, killing him. I have killed him. I will kill him. I am killing him… there is not an hour that passes where I don't see him behind the Doors. See him dying. It's like a second shadow filling the space beside me. And I will live with that regret forever. But if I save just _one_ life, one of these Little Sisters, then perhaps I can finally step through a Door where Booker DeWitt cannot follow me. Where I can be happy again."

Robert sighed. "Frank Fontaine is not a very pleasant man, but he is right on one account."

"In Rapture, the most important thing to oneself, is oneself," added Rosalind.

"We believe you understand that principle exceptionally well."

The words hurt. Elizabeth swallowed back a few choice rejoinders as she circled the atrium, mostly because she knew in her heart that Robert and Rosalind were right. And by the time she cared to see if they had followed her, the Luteces were already gone.

She didn't allow herself to dwell on them; she had much more prosaic things to worry about. Elizabeth knew that allying herself with Tenenbaum would jeopardize any influence she had with the community in Fort Frolic, not that it would constitute a great loss. Sander Cohen ruled that small, bright neverland, emblazoning the corridors in violent brushstrokes of red and white, muttering nonsense to his muse when he thought no one was listening. The maestro had lost his mind long before he spliced with his first plasmid.

Hector Rodriguez drank himself into nonsensicality in Sinclair Spirits. Silas Cobb sought solace in his Eve syringes, and Martin Finnegan exiled himself to the frozen tunnel between the atrium and Poseidon Plaza. Most of Cohen's disciples were lost causes. But there was one person Elizabeth didn't want to leave behind.

She found him on the stage of the Fleet Hall, sitting at the piano. He picked at a single key: middle C, over and over and over again, out of tune and without melody. In the silent theater, it sounded like someone chipping away at a block of stone. Elizabeth approached. She cleared her throat to be heard, but he did not register her presence.

"Kyle?" asked Elizabeth tentatively. There was something off about his posture… "Kyle, I have to talk to you about something…"

Kyle Fitzpatrick continued to pick at his middle C key. He kept his back turned to her.

"Kyle?" Elizabeth circled around the piano.

She had to choke down her scream.

Kyle Fitzpatrick's face had been torn open, his skin haphazardly stitched back together. Half of his skull was swathed in bandages. Pus had begun to seep through the dressing; flies orbited his head, landing in the suppuration. His lips had been pulled back over his necrotic gums. Someone had carved his mouth into a permanent sneer. His fingernails had been torn out, his cuticles sliced to the knuckle. His arms were burnt and blistered, and every movement elicited a whimper of pain.

One unblinking eye lolled in its socket; trachoma had turned the cornea opaque and chalky. The working eye darted around in terror. The pupil glowed choleraic yellow.

 _… see young Fitzpatrick here on the stage… take him as he is now… so I may remember him…_

"Oh God…" Elizabeth tore the hem of her dress. She wrapped the tourniquet around Kyle's blind eye. "What…" her hands began to shake. "This wasn't supposed to… Who the hell did this to you?"

Fitzpatrick's mouth couldn't seem to form the words. His mouth twitched, his lips splitting and blood staining in his teeth.

"Steinman sculpts, but I merely provide the clay…"

Elizabeth rounded on Sander Cohen. He stood in the center aisle of the theater, his smile like a bloody crescent carved into his face. Elizabeth saw red. All rational thought faded behind the sound of her heartbeat in her ears. She felt Booker standing beside her; she saw him grabbing Comstock's head, cracking his skull across the basin…

"You… fucking… bastard…"

Elizabeth lunged at Cohen. With his spliced reflexes, he was much quicker. She swung at him, he caught her wrist, spun her around the aisle, as though dancing. Elizabeth tried to bite his hand.

"Oh, naughty."

Cohen twisted her arm behind her back; Elizabeth felt her shoulder pop. He held the other down to her side in a grip so tight his fingernails dug into her skin. Elizabeth struggled, but she didn't cry out.

"I warned you, little songbird," Cohen hissed: "fuck it up with Andrew, and there would be consequences."

Elizabeth tried to shake him off, and his nails dug deeper. "For me… not for Kyle. No one else… no one else…"

"Look at me, girl."

He forced her head around. She met his bright eyes… flickering between hazel and yellow.

"You are my biggest disappointment," he whispered against her cheek, "so puerile and derivative… but Fitzpatrick has shirked the veil of convention. He embodies the unconscious swathes of expression, captures beauty through vibrant screams of color. Is he not exquisite?"

Fitzpatrick dragged his mutilated fingers across the keyboard. A sob dripped from the broken remnants of his mouth.

Abruptly, Cohen let her go. Elizabeth's shoulder howled; her right hand hung limply at her side.

"Fontaine's Department Store, you say?" Cohen flashed his yellowing teeth. "If one deigns to talk to oneself one should do it in the privacy of one's own abode, hmm?"

"I will end you, Cohen," Elizabeth said haggardly. She felt a tug in her gut; it would be so easy to open a Door, unleash hell…

"Well, Elizabeth dear, your contract is not due for renewal until the end of December, so you have ample time to reconsider before threatening me again."

Elizabeth had a better idea. "I'm leaving, _now_ … and I'm taking Fitzpatrick with me."

Sander Cohen's scream rattled the rafters, "YOU LEAVE ME NOW AND YOU WILL NEVER FIND THOSE MISSING GIRLS!"

"No…"

The tiny voice came from the broken man at the piano. Elizabeth elbowed past Cohen. She knelt beside Kyle on the stage, looked up into the sliced scraps of his face.

"… can't leave…" his words diffused into the air, "he… won't let me…"

Elizabeth stared hard at his one working eye: yellow, glowing. Despite his necrotic skin, Fitzpatrick smelled sickly sweet, like fruit. Elizabeth recognized the signs of hypnotic pheromone splicing. Fitzpatrick was entirely subject to Cohen's will.

"I won't leave here without you," promised Elizabeth.

"How delightful!" Cohen sounded elated. As he strode from the theater, he called back to her, "Make yourself presentable, little songbird! We have a performance tonight, and I simply cannot wait to see the look on Anna Culpepper's face…"

Elizabeth sat down on the stage, leant against the piano. Kyle Fitzpatrick played the single note, over and over again, until her heart began to beat in tune to the music. Like a metronome, demarcating the dying hours.

She hugged her knees. And she cried.


	10. X

November 22nd, 1958

 _Audio Transcript – 'Liar'_

 _[You said I would find you. You said I would never be alone. But they've taken away my only friend. Kyle Fitzpatrick was all I had. I don't think he ever realized that, and now he never will. These madmen have managed to snuff out the one small, bright light still burning in this dark place. And when I close my eyes, I hear that middle C playing over and over again, breaking across the night. There is nothing left for me here. But I stay because I made a promise, and I intend to keep it. I will not wait for you anymore, Booker. And when I have saved those girls, when Rapture is a pitted ruin, buried at the bottom of the sea, and when the first second of eternity has passed, I will close the Doors on you forever.]_

I look thinner, Elizabeth thought, watching her reflection ripple in the water fixtures. I look as though the smallest breath of wind will carry me away.

The last few months had been unkind to her. As her popularity continued to grow, Cohen had extended Elizabeth's performance dates, added matinees, written more and more songs. She appeared at every after party and social event, a permanent fixture of Cohen's ego. And when she didn't return their leering smiles and sickening kindness, Cohen took away her books.

He was punishing her… for embarrassing him in front of Ryan. And every time Elizabeth saw Kyle Fitzpatrick slouched over the piano, every time she slept –– shards of time and space slicing through her dreams like splinters of broken glass –– she believed the punishment was working. She was being unstitched, eaten away. Cohen was turning her into something as empty and sad as Rapture itself.

Elizabeth was painfully aware that she could leave Fort Frolic whenever she wanted. The other disciples stayed because they provided other, more physical favors Cohen didn't seem especially interested in extracting from her. Elizabeth doubted Cohen even liked girls. But she had made a promise to Kyle Fitzpatrick, and even if he couldn't remember what it was, Elizabeth had every intention of keeping her word. So she stayed, and she endured.

Some of the Fort Frolic regulars had inquired about Elizabeth's possible ill health. Cohen, the bastard, had had the audacity to suggest a visit to Dr. Steinman in the medical pavilion. Elizabeth crunched her knuckles; anger at the memory twisted her stomach into knots.

Recently, she sought asylum in Arcadia. Despite being several hundred fathoms below the ocean's surface, Arcadia managed to evoke the feel of an actual forest so much so that Elizabeth could almost convince herself of its reality. Almost.

There was a strange stillness beneath the smell of wet earth and moldering, organic things. No animals scurried through the undergrowth. There was no birdsong, no bees. The plants were pollinated using enzyme vectors: special chemical concoctions pumped from the Langford research laboratories at the heart of the district.

Parts of Arcadia gave the impression of catatonia, as though the remaining life had relapsed into a deep sleep, kept alive by artifice and machine and chemical engineering. As Elizabeth walked through the gardens, she felt as though she was walking through a painting: silent, still, beautiful. Dead in all the important ways.

She passed a Circus of Values, and bought a cigarette. As she smoked, Elizabeth took a shortcut through the workshops, emerged in the tea garden at the edge of Arcadia. She sat on one of the benches by the brook and watched the water gurgle between the stones. She took a puff of her cigarette; the tar and smoke dissipated under the oxygen scrubbers. The walls separating one reality from another seemed diluted. Silhouettes flickered on the walls, like shadows pulled through a pinhole of candlelight. Elizabeth ignored them. She blew a ring of smoke; behind it, the air glistened with mist. She blew another, and the mist changed to toxic gas. She concentrated, and the gas became cherry blossoms floating on the water. Tears shimmered in the peripheries of the garden. All around her, an infinite number of worlds bled into each other, blurring into viscous smears like oil in rainwater.

In Arcadia, the Doors were as clear as temptation. Elizabeth suspected it had something to do with the abnormally high oxygen concentration coupled with the pressure differential, the paradox of having a photosynthesizing arboretum at the bottom of the sea. Much like the Tears, it was the consequence of two separate worlds being gracelessly bolted together. Which was why, despite the rigor mortis that seemed to paralyze the forest, Elizabeth felt strangely at home.

In his unerring crusade against collectivism, Andrew Ryan had restricted access to Arcadia to all but paying customers. The forests were largely empty, so when a man strolled into the tea gardens, he startled Elizabeth.

Then she saw who it was; her eyes narrowed.

"Hello there, my girl," said the man, not unkindly, in his affable Georgia accent.

"I have nothing to say to you."

"Not too bright an idea to be wandering around Arcadia without an escort, what with those Saturnine fellas wrecking havoc up yonder."

"I can look after myself." Elizabeth tossed her cigarette into the brook. "You've done enough."

Augustus Sinclair deftly picked up the litter and put it in a nearby ashtray. "Now, I won't go around making excuses for myself," before Elizabeth could object, he sat next to her on the bench, "and I ain't about to apologize. Rapture's a high-stakes town, my girl, and Frankie Fontaine's Lil' Dimples are the jackpot. Once Solutions bought a stake in the plasmid business, turning a profit was gravy. It's the way of things down here."

"In other words, it was nothing personal," Elizabeth said stonily. "Spying on me for Ryan, sponsoring a monster like Cohen in kidnapping those girls."

"Of course it ain't personal. I like you, Elizabeth. I wouldn't have told ol' Andy about you if I reckoned he was going to do you an injury."

"Whereas Cohen was free to do whatever he pleased."

"There ain't no reasoning with a screwy sonofabitch like Cohen. But leaving that frolic den is entirely your perquisite, my girl. Why stay?"

"I have my reasons." Elizabeth didn't mention Fitzpatrick. She doubted Augustus Sinclair would understand, and even if he did, he would probably find a way to spin it into a business ploy. Elizabeth hated how Ryan and Sinclair manipulated the lives of innocent people in their endless civil maneuvering.

"That's well as may be, but if I were you, kid, I'd head for the hills while the going was good."

Elizabeth sniffed in disdain. "I'm not afraid of Sander Cohen."

"You right well ought a' be."

"You're a coward, Mr. Sinclair. Even Andrew Ryan called you _spineless_ … a man adapting depravity into a business strategy. I'm inclined to think he was right."

"Strange bedfellows and all that, my girl. Oh, Andy Ryan despises me, but that doesn't stop the ornery old goat from giving me a ring when he needs someone to make a discreet but hasty exit from the Rapture public eye."

"You're no better than Fontaine."

"Well, now, that does sting a bit, Miss Elizabeth." Sinclair looked sincerely hurt. "Survival ain't always pretty, but it's the only game in this town." Suddenly, something struck Sinclair as terribly amusing. He began to laugh; his voice echoed loudly around the chamber of the tea gardens.

Elizabeth cut across the giggles, "Have you said something funny, or have I?"

"I'm sorry, my girl…" he stifled a chuckle, "it's Rapture! This whole city's proof positive that Ryan's vision a' Utopia ain't nothing but a pipe dream… just like I told him from day one. And poor Andy's always hated me for being right. I was a voice in the wilderness, but now that wilderness is turning into a mass grave, one big ol' tacky headstone made a' steel and neon."

Augustus Sinclair continued to laugh. Elizabeth heard a middle C chord ringing in the back of her head, and she failed to see the joke.

"If you were so convinced of Ryan's failure… why come here at all?"

"Because I _believed_ … we all did. Frau Tenenbaum, Frankie Fontaine… even you, my girl. See, life in Rapture ain't about buying into Andy Ryan's vision of paradise; paradise ain't nothing but a confidence game anyway, and trying to build one is trying to boil the ocean. I believed in _potential_ , the would-be's and hypotheticals a place like Rapture could offer a fella like me, outside a' Ryan's little ambitions."

"I'd hardly call building a city at the bottom of the ocean 'little ambitions.'"

"And look how well that's turning out for the old man. Andy's tough as nails and twice as sharp, make no mistake. He has a brilliant mind, but it's a one-track mind leading to roundabouts and dead ends. Writing on the wall, Elizabeth… survival. Change. Got to know when to cash in your chips, when to be flexible. Adaptability is what you need to get by in Rapture, and it's the one thing Andy Ryan's always been lacking. It's why Fontaine had the jump on him for so damn long. It's why I decided to strike a bargain with that odd duck in Fort Frolic, because I had to make a change, and because it worked to our mutual benefit. But after Frankie Fontaine got his comeuppance, that should've been the end of that nasty business with Cohen." Sinclair pursed his lips thoughtfully. "And now I find out that Cohen's _still_ reaping the harvest on them Little Sisters… turning a profit behind my back…"

"Why should the fate of the Little Sisters bother you? It's not as though it's ever pricked your conscience before."

"Very true. Down here, a bleeding heart tends to bring in the sharks. But the whole aim of our little partnership was to put the squeeze on Frankie Fontaine… for Ryan. And now that Andy Ryan owns the plasmid business lock, stock, and barrel, he needs those little girls something desperately, and here we have Cohen blotting Ryan's copybook by selling the girls to higher bidders. Profitable for Cohen, but it's hardly profitable for Sinclair Solutions or my client, Ryan Industries. Besides," Sinclair grinned, "it's making Ryan madder than a wet hen."

"From what I've been able to gather, most of the girls in Cohen's keep are orphans from Fontaine's poorhouses. According to his ledger, a vast majority of them _do_ eventually get turned into Little Sisters."

"But not all of 'em…" Sinclair's hazel eyes darkened. "Sometimes folks down here need to scratch an itch they're ashamed of. Even in a town with no laws, there are some appetites that just don't sit too well with people's stomachs."

Elizabeth shuddered. "So Cohen provides… a service. Those poor girls… It's obscene."

"Profit coming, profit going." Sinclair tried to sound blasé, but Elizabeth could tell the whole business bothered him. "I just don't take too kindly to Cohen holding all the aces."

"So why come to me?"

"Because, as I said, I like you. And we have a shared predicament in the form of Sander Cohen. Think of my help as a mutual venture… an investment a' sorts."

Elizabeth crossed her arms. "You're saying you want to end Cohen's child trafficking ring… even though you're the one who started it."

"Adaptation. The game has changed, my girl. I gotta change with it."

"Why should I trust you?"

"Well, chiefly because you're not exactly swimming in alternatives. And if you want to take the taint out a' Cohen's little enterprise, you're gonna need a fair bit a' help."

She considered him for a moment. "I'm listening."

Augustus Sinclair grinned. "That's what I like to hear. There're two parts to this whole plasmid business, kid: the little ones… and their tin daddies. Before Frankie Fontaine's untimely end, the old crook oversaw much of the science mumbo jumbo with the help of that German beanpole of his. He near about cornered the market on nucleotides and gene sequences, but the Protectors were a bit more complicated. See, if a few younguns from the orphanage go missing, no one looks at you sidewise, but if Mary Sue and Johnny Topside vanish in the night, people are quick to start pointing fingers. Ol' Gil Alexander had to spread the business thin."

"This is not news to me, Mr. Sinclair. The test subjects were once inmates in Persephone penal colony… _your_ penal colony. The Big Daddies were human lab rats." Elizabeth didn't hide her revulsion. "When their DNA couldn't take the endless splicing, you lobotomized them and stitched them into those diving suits. Finally, you sent them to the old Memorial Museum at Point Prometheus, to the final stage of proving grounds. The operation was spread out, difficult to monitor. It was easy for Ryan Industries to get a foothold in the plasmid industry without alerting Fontaine."

"Exactly. And with Fontaine running circles like a blind dog in a meat market and Ryan trying to keep his nose clean of the whole business, it fell to me to count coup. I offered my services as middleman, in charge of keeping track of the riff-raff, hold with the hare and run with the hounds."

You have a hand in practically everything, Mr. Sinclair, thought Elizabeth, partly in admiration, mostly in disgust.

"I reckoned there were one of two places for the little gals to go," Sinclair continued; he held up a finger and thumb for emphasis, "either ol' Frankie's backyard up at Fontaine Futuristics, or spirited away to the proving grounds to give those tin daddies something to look after. The total number of Little Sisters between the two locales never changed. Sander and I were squirrelling 'em out from under Fontaine's nose, that's true, but we never thinned their number. But after the events of the twelfth of September, I found some… inconsistencies."

"Tenenbaum."

"Not just yet. This was well before our gal Tenenbaum decided to grow a conscience. Our mutual friend Mr. Cohen, meanwhile, was otherwise preoccupied writing songs for a certain meadowlark in his employ."

Elizabeth's knuckles whitened. "I know."

If Sinclair noticed her anger, he didn't comment on it. "So we have Andy Ryan consolidating the assets of our dearly departed Mr. Fontaine, and he asks me to do a headcount of the little girls. Well, I crunched the numbers, averaging different tabulation constructs and the like. I had my boys down at Persephone tally Frankie Fontaine's fully converted Sisters against the orphanage manifest. The eggheads in marketing over at Point Prometheus counted only fully converted Sisters, while my own report was based on Sisters, orphans, the little gals still in Cohen's tender loving care at the time of Fontaine's death, and the girls leased to Gil Alexander."

"You were very thorough."

"Part of the contract, my girl. Ol' Andy rambles on about that Great Chain a' his… but his paranoia was shelling out to pull it for me! Now, bearing in mind that Fontaine Futuristics and Ryan Industries' budgeting headcounts came out at around 400 for the comparable period of the previous month, an objective observer could say my new counts should sum in the same ballpark. But, once I put two and two together, strike me dead if I don't find one of those little gals missing!"

"Just one?"

"Just one." Sinclair put his arm on the back of the bench. He mused, "Now… seems there's a dark horse out there who done snatched a little sis without Fontaine _or_ Ryan knowing about it. I don't know about you, my girl, but if I had my druthers, I'd like to make his acquaintance… and maybe buy him a drink on the nightly."

Elizabeth felt her spirits rising for the first time in many weeks. "You're saying… I may have an ally."

"Not just an ally… a whole damn strategy. Our mysterious knight in shining armor has already managed the liberation of one little sister… I reckon he could manage a few more. That paddy in Apollo Square's already mustered an army. Maybe he's got the right idea."

"So if I can find this missing girl… she will lead me to the person who, well… adopted her, I suppose."

"Even I don't know where she is now. But I _can_ tell you the gal's name: Sally."

Elizabeth froze. "What?" _Sally…_

"I checked the names against Tenenbaum's lab reports and Alexander's field tests. Gal we're looking for calls herself Sally."

 _Sally… I'm so sorry… I'm not leaving without that girl…_

 _… I see life in rosy hues. He tells me words of love, words of every day, and in them I become something… a part of happiness, and I understand the reason. It's he for me and I for him, throughout life… and from the things that I sense, now I can feel within me…_

 _Someone held her hand and lead her into music and light… and the pain was gone. And everything ended with a sigh…_

"Are you okay, my girl?"

Sinclair's voice brought her back. "Yes… I'm sorry, I thought I heard music…"

"Your nose is bleeding."

"I know." Sinclair offered her a handkerchief. Elizabeth took it and dabbed away the blood. "That's been known to happen. I'm fine."

Sinclair didn't seem convinced, but he kept his thoughts to himself.

Elizabeth got up, started in the direction of the Rapture Metro in the Arcadia Rolling Hills: "I have to get to Fontaine's Department Store."

Sinclair looked distinctly alarmed. "Why on earth––"

"Because I believe Brigid Tenenbaum is there. She must know _something_ about this Sally. Together, we can find the girl, her benefactor, and finally put an end to this nightmare."

"Elizabeth… now hold on a minute, kid…"

Sinclair, without thinking, tried to grab her arm; Elizabeth promptly kicked him in the kneecap. Sinclair collapsed with a yelp of pain.

"Touch me again and I'll cripple you."

"You can't go to Fontaine's!" he grimaced.

"Why not?"

"Tenenbaum ain't there, kid."

"And how the hell would you know that?" demanded Elizabeth

"Tenenbaum wouldn't risk her little ones in a place like that! Look, kid, the department store's where Andy Ryan put the rest of Fontaine's spliced-up posse," he added through gritted teeth, "and… that's where he's fixing to trap Atlas!"

One of the Tears at the edge of the tea garden suddenly flared magnesium white. Elizabeth felt a rush of energy and light and heat, burning the hair on her arms. But the sound of the blast didn't come from inside the Tear. Somewhere in Rapture, an explosion tore through polarized steel and concrete foundations. A triumvirate of buildings teetered on the edge of a precipice before the tremors sent them plunging into the deep. As the structures drifted slowly to the bottom of the trench, bubbles spiraled towards the surface, the water boiling from the heat.

Moments later, they felt the shockwave race through the city. The trees of Arcadia shivered. Detritus spiraled from the ceiling. On the ground next to her, Sinclair was knocked on his side.

"Oh hell," he moaned, "he's done it, hasn't he? Sunk 'em right to the bottom…"

"The department store…" Elizabeth ran to one of the portholes inlaid in the wall. Across the city, where three enormous buildings had once stood, there were only splintered buttresses of coral.

Fontaine's Department Store was gone.

"If the bends don't get 'em, Fontaine's splicers will…" murmured Sinclair, lurching to his feet. "Poor bastards. Going crazy'll be the sanest thing left to do."

Elizabeth felt light-headed. Andrew Ryan had _known_ where Atlas would take his followers… because Cohen had overheard Elizabeth speaking to the Luteces. Atlas' army was trapped fifty fathoms below Rapture, entombed with the deranged remnants of Frank Fontaine's splicers. And if Brigid Tenenbaum was with them… there was no way to get to her or the Little Sisters. Even if there were some infinitesimal chance of a rescue, by the time Elizabeth scrounged the necessary resources, Tenenbaum would already be dead.

It was over.

"No… NO!"

Elizabeth smashed her fists against the porthole. Her knuckles hurt, but the glass held.

"I won't accept this, Ryan!" she snarled. Then she faced the security camera whirring in the corner, "Do you hear me, you cold blooded son of a bitch?! You had to do it, didn't you? You had to go and end it! Oh yes! Because that is who you are! _Do you hear me?!"_ Hot tears ran down her cheeks. "Does this make you feel big, Great Man? Does this make you feel important? You would destroy a city to save an ideal, but even when you are all alone, when your imagined enemies are finally defeated, you will still be… _so… small_. Look at you. You're not remotely important! You're nothing! In a thousand years, no one will remember the great Andrew Ryan!" Elizabeth slumped to her knees, her forehead pressed against the porthole. Her voice dropped to a whisper:

"But me? I can see so much. I could do _so much_." With each word she knocked her head against the glass. "But this is all I get… and it's not fair… it's not fair…"

Elizabeth took a few shuddering breaths. Her palm was cold against the porthole.

"This shouldn't be how it ends…" she murmured, exhausted. She had no more tears, and her head hurt. "I am owed so much more than this…"

Elizabeth watched the dust settle at the edge of the city. She waited for something to happen, but nothing changed. The bathyspheres meandered between the buildings. The neon lights flashed. Bubbles spiraled in lazy helixes towards the sunlight. Empty rooms moldered and decayed. Rapture rotted at the bottom of the sea.

Then Augustus Sinclair put his hand on her shoulder. Elizabeth allowed herself to be led away.

"I was owed so much more…"

"We all were," he said quietly.


	11. XI

December 30th, 1958

 _Audio Transcript – 'Goodbye'_

 _[There are times when I forget the warmth of the sun, the sound of birds, the indigo of a midnight sky peppered with starlight. In my dreams, I open Tears, just to remind myself of the worlds I've left behind. But the Doors have become mirrors; through every one, there is a city. There is a shadow growing unseen in the corners of the room, darker than the nightmare depths of the ocean. These universes have become infinity mirrors, reflecting the world back into the Doors, in recursion, creating smaller and smaller reflections that appear to recede into the infinite distance. When Lutece told me that this city housed the final iteration of my enemy, I wonder… did they mean Comstock? What if this is the final iteration for all of us, the last mirror in infinity. These echoes have become my epitaph, here at the end of all things.]_

Elizabeth thought the tracks on Cohen's new album "Why Even Ask" were an insult to the inner ear, but the people of Rapture seemed to like them. And so long as Cohen was busy posing and posturing on the Fleet Hall stage, Elizabeth was free to poke around the projection booth.

The door was locked with a Yale lock, a radial variation of the cylinder lock, one that used tubular pins. The original key would be circular in shape, with several half-cylinder indentations designed to align with the pins. The locks in Rapture had proven to be slightly more sophisticated than the locks in Columbia, but like Sinclair, Elizabeth had adapted. And after Cohen decided to lock her books in a safe beneath his office desk, Elizabeth had readily accepted the challenge. It hadn't taken her long to design her own lock pick.

She inserted her lash-up into the lock, turned it clockwise with only a slight bit of tension on the pins. As she pushed the pick further, the pins were forced down, binding the driver pins behind the shear line of the lock. As Elizabeth pushed the final pin down, the lock clicked, and the door swung open.

It never gets old, Elizabeth thought to herself, smiling grimly.

The projection booth was a small, sparsely furnished room overlooking the center aisle of the Fleet Hall. The projector dominated the center of the room; several filing cabinets and a desk had been pushed into one corner. Elizabeth sat in Cohen's chair. He kept his accu-vox diaries in a bin on the floor. Elizabeth picked one up, dated the tenth of December. After a brief burst of static, the tape began to spin:

 _[I was a little leery when he shuttered Fontaine's business and sent that bald buck to a grave deep in the briny. But when Ryan buried all of Fontaine's pals in that department store, someone had to find a home for all those freshly minted orphans. And if I turned a dollar or two in the process, you can hardly blame me for doing well by doing good…]_

Elizabeth placed the recorder back on the pile. She began to rifle through the receipts and invoices stored in the desk. Cohen may have had more than several screws loose, but he kept a meticulous record of his transactions. Most of his accounts detailed sales of the girls to the Optimized Eugenics laboratory, formerly the Fontaine Futuristics Genetic Research Department, where Ryan had taken over as chief executive officer. However, several bills of sale corroborated Sinclair's allegations: some girls had been sent to other buyers, mostly shadowy characters in Rapture's less reputable neighborhoods. Elizabeth found an invoice from Daniel Wales, the owner of the Pink Pearl brothel in Siren Alley. Elizabeth knew what went on in the Pink Pearl, and she didn't like to think about it at great length. The word on the street was that Daniel Wales, the local governor, was spliced beyond recognition and had traded an architecture firm for more carnal _métiers_. Siren Alley was one of Rapture's unspoken horrors, left to fester in its depravity. The prospect of children living in a place like that turned Elizabeth's stomach.

She found the manifest of the Little Sisters Orphanage in Hedone Plaza. The date was stamped the tenth of August, five days before Elizabeth arrived in the city. Cohen had kept photographs of the children, stapled them next to the names. She perused the bottom of the list, skipping to the girls who had gone missing by the time Frank Fontaine contracted out to her: _Mascha, Leta, Eleanor… Sally…_

Elizabeth checked the manifest against the register Augustus Sinclair had provided; Sally's name was glaringly absent. She wasn't listed amongst Gilbert Alexander's test subjects either. The girl had never reached Point Prometheus.

Elizabeth put the old manifest aside and opened another drawer. She found a newer list of names, the latest Little Sisters converted at Optimized Eugenics. The date stamp was the twentieth of November, two days before Ryan sunk Fontaine's Department Store to the bottom of an ocean trench. And in his scrawled shorthand, Sander Cohen had penciled an extra name in the margins adjacent to the typed register.

 _Sally… at Sir Prize_

Elizabeth leant back in the chair and pinched the bridge of her nose. The manifest confirmed an ugly suspicion Elizabeth had been harboring since Arcadia. Somehow, Cohen had gotten ahold of Sally. Found her at Sir Prize, the casino in Poseidon Plaza, Cohen's home turf. Martin Finnegan or Hector Rodriguez had probably tipped Cohen off about the girl. Even though Sally's mysterious benefactor had successfully spirited her away from Fontaine and Alexander, Cohen had managed to steal her back… and had had her converted into a Little Sister.

At least, Elizabeth thought miserably, Sally wasn't in the hands of someone like Daniel Wales. Then Elizabeth thought of those girls, with their glassy eyes and disjointed, haunting nursery rhymes, wandering barefoot and dirty through the streets of Rapture, accompanied by their golemesque companions, and she wondered if conversion really _was_ preferable to the alternatives.

A crash outside the projection booth caught Elizabeth's attention. At first, she thought one of Cohen's disciples was going to break in and discover her, and she didn't think Silas Cobb and company would take too kindly to her rifling through their employer's private belongings. She picked up one of the audio diaries, prepared to throw it at someone's head and dive through the door…

Elizabeth was almost relieved to hear the shouting coming from the Fleet Hall, far below the projection booth. She stuck her head through the window. The show that night was standing room only; the theater hall was packed with patrons, all clamoring to hear Cohen's new album. Those without seats languished in the aisles. But someone was pushing through the crowd, trying to make his way towards the stage, where Cohen was still singing, even though the pit band had gone quiet. There were murmurs of confusion from the stage crew, while people in the audience shifted uncomfortably. Someone in box seating began to shout. Cohen, finally, finished a protracted cantata and glared indignantly at the source of the interruption.

"WATCH YOURSELF, YOU CLUMSY SOW!" Cohen thundered, "THIS IS MY WORK YOU'RE INTERRUPTING!"

Elizabeth strained to hear the response of the man pushing through the audience. Behind the glare of the stage lights, his features were hard to distinguish. He was tall, and quite strong; he pushed the audience aside with ease. When the man reached the stage, the microphones picked up the trailing ends of his slurred, drunken garble:

"I'm not… letting you… take her. No… no I ain't gonna… let you take her…"

Some of the stage crew began to murmur amongst themselves: "What's he doing off Main Street?"

"Probably crawled out of Sinclair Spirits."

"Nah, they don't serve him no more…"

Cohen clearly recognized the man, as did a few of the burlier security guards. The man managed to lift himself partway onto the stage, until he was hanging on his elbows. He was so drunk that he could barely keep his head up. Cohen smiled and put one spat on the man's forehead. Somehow, Elizabeth heard the maestro from across the Fleet Hall:

"Come and find her," Cohen hissed.

 _Find me…_

Cohen gave the man a gentle push with his shoe. The drunkard fell onto the floor.

"Get this rube out of my sight," Cohen ordered Ryan security.

The officers hauled the man to his feet. One on each arm, they dragged him away from the stage. The crowd parted for them; some people looked distinctly annoyed. Others looked frightened. Most thought it was all part of Cohen's act. As he was lead down the center aisle, Elizabeth got her first clear look at the stranger.

His was an older man; his face was lined, but youthful. White hair cut short. High cheekbones. Tall and limber. Red-rimmed eyes the color of a cloudless sky.

It was Booker DeWitt.

… _MASKED Faces VISAGE within a wheel of blood spinning round and SALLY round WHEN DOES PORCELAIN BECOME FLESH faces… spirals…_

 _… find me. I'm here, in Rapture. Find me._

"I found you."

Elizabeth felt another Door open. And this time, she looked behind it.

She was in the Lutece laboratories, back in Columbia. She was wearing Lady Comstock's blue dress. Her short, ragged hair blew around her face. She could smell the rain on the wind, the thunderstorms in the coppery taste of the air. Static curled along her arms. Outside, black clouds rolled out from under the floating city. Lightning flashed in glowing fractals, and thunder cracked across the sky.

Elizabeth stepped towards the Lutece device in the corner of the room. The silvery, shimmering Tear opened onto a back alley, faced a nondescript brick wall. Light flickered across a threshold that spanned universes.

Cascading across an infinite number of worlds, Elizabeth heard the sound of a baby crying.

Suddenly, Robert Lutece stumbled through the Tear, breathless, his expression resolute and grim. Rosalind Lutece –– whom Elizabeth hadn't noticed before –– steadied her counterpart before peering anxiously through the Tear.

"Is he…?" she began.

"Coming," he finished. "Yes."

Elizabeth knew what was going to happen next, but she couldn't stop it. The crying drew nearer. She heard shouting. Cursing. Despair.

When Zachary Comstock lurched through the Tear, he was carrying a swaddled infant in his arms. "Close it!" he bellowed at Lutece. "Close it now!"

Then Booker appeared. He seized Comstock's arm, tried frantically to tear the child away.

"Give her back!" Booker barred his teeth and tugged. _"Give her back!"_

Comstock struggled to pull the baby girl through the Tear. "She's mine!"

Elizabeth appeared at Comstock's side. Her blue eyes blazed. "You're hurting her!"

Somehow, Comstock could see her. Tears poured down his cheeks. "She's got to come with me!" he said desperately.

On the other side of the Tear, Booker DeWitt pulled with every ounce of his strength. Zachary Comstock pulled with every ounce of his.

"She's not your child!" snarled Elizabeth.

"She IS mine!"

"Let her go!" Elizabeth screamed, "Let her go!"

"She's mine!" cried Booker. His voice echoed across a Sea of Doors.

"The Tear is closing!" warned Robert Lutece.

Comstock whirled around to the Luteces. "Shut it down. Shut down the machine!"

Elizabeth shook her head, tried to reach out to him…

"You've got to pull her through," pleaded Rosalind Lutece.

"Pull!"

"Pull!"

And they pulled.

"Shut down the machine!" bellowed Comstock.

The aperture in the air was closing.

"No, she's not through!" cried one Lutece.

"Hurry!" cried the other.

"SHUT IT DOWN!"

"Oh no no no look out…"

Elizabeth knew what was going to happen. And there was nothing she could do to stop it.

Booker DeWitt finally wrenched his child free from Zachary Comstock, just as the Tear closed, and the gateway telescoped shut. Somewhere, the Luteces shouted in despair. Comstock's hands grasped at empty air. Something landed at his feet, rolled across the floor…

Elizabeth screamed in grief, in hatred. No one heard her. The silence swallowed the world.

She was back in Rapture, standing at the window of the projection booth. And Ryan security was dragging Zachary Comstock out of the Fleet Hall.

Elizabeth felt a rush of lucidity, like a dash of icy water. She took a deep breath, and suddenly the recycled Rapturian air didn't taste quite so stale. It tasted of thunder and fury.

She looked at the open register on Cohen's desk… at the name scribbled in shorthand. Her father had never been content with his own decisions. He was only ever satisfied after he had appropriated someone else's life for his own. Always a lighthouse, always a city. Always a girl. Regret, fate, mercy, revenge… superpositive forces, simultaneous but decohesive, dividing one universe from another. But the superposition had collapsed. Elizabeth knew what she had to do.

She tore out the page, and crushed it in her fist.

Below her, Kyle Fitzpatrick picked at the piano, his ruined face hidden behind his mask. His fingers hovered over middle C.

Elizabeth ignored him.

She soon forgot the names of the other Little Sisters. Forgot Cohen. Forgot Sinclair and Fontaine and Tenenbaum. Forgot Andrew Ryan. Forgot all the little people. History would steamroll over them. Their lives would begin and end in the blink of an eye, their memories would fade, turn to dust, and evanesce into the forgotten margins of eternity.

Elizabeth unclipped Sally's photograph from Cohen's ledger. She slipped it into her pocket, and left the projection booth.

Around her, the city slept. And somewhere in Rapture, a clock chimed New Year's Eve, 1958.

 _Continued in Bioshock Infinite: Burial at Sea_


End file.
